In-house, product design team
2022
Zalando Plus
Leading research through service blueprinting and pilot launch for Zalando Plus.
- Role
- Product Designer
- Timeline
- Jun 2022 to Dec 2022 · Berlin, Germany
- Disciplines
- Service Design, Design Systems, Product Design
- Tools
- Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Google Workspace
At a glance
- The problem
- Zalando Plus needed cohesive, consistent design across the platform, and its existing UI/UX templates had gone out of date.
- My role
- Led the design process from research and concept through service blueprinting and pilot launch, shipping several features for Zalando Plus.
- What I did
- Created a comprehensive design blueprint for the Zalando Plus team; revamped outdated UI/UX templates alongside developers, PMs and stakeholders; contributed to design rituals, workshops, critiques and the design system.
- What changed
- User engagement rose 15%. That figure is my own rather than an independent audit, and no further metrics, screens or interface detail are published here.
How to read this case study
Research writing gets less useful the more it blurs what was found with what was guessed. Every claim below is labelled with how much weight it can carry.
- Observed
- Came directly from data I collected. A source is always named.
- Interpreted
- My reading of that data. Reasonable, and still mine rather than the participants'.
- Hypothesis
- A proposition I have not yet tested. Written down so it can be proved wrong.
- Unvalidated concept
- A design idea. There is no evidence yet that it works.
What I did
End to end on a set of features, inside an established product organisation.
My work on Zalando Plus sat inside a larger product ecosystem, where consistency, collaboration and service experiences intersect. I led the design process end to end for a set of features, from research and concept through service blueprinting to a pilot launch, and produced a design blueprint meant to keep the team's output cohesive afterwards, not only for the features I shipped myself.
Engagement rose 15% after the work. That figure is my own rather than an independent audit, and it is the only number published here.
Two things I would point at
Interpreted
Service blueprinting was the useful instrument, not the wireframes. A membership proposition is experienced across touchpoints that different teams own, so the thing worth drawing is the seam between them rather than any single screen.
Interpreted
A blueprint outlives a feature. Revamping the templates fixed what was in front of me; writing down the patterns is what let the next person be consistent with me without asking.
How it ran
Double diamond, the same as my other product work, compressed by what can be said.
Step 01
Discover
Research into how members actually experience the proposition, across the touchpoints that make it up rather than within one product surface.
Step 02
Define
Service blueprinting, to get the seams between teams onto one page where they could be argued about.
Step 03
Develop
Interface patterns and revamped templates, worked through with developers, PMs and stakeholders rather than handed to them, alongside design rituals, workshops and critiques.
Step 04
Deliver
A pilot launch for the features, and the design blueprint as the lasting artefact for the team.