📱 Unifying Westfield
“After 2 years in existence, Westfield Labs had created quite a few successful products and services. But now, all this great stuff was fragmented among vastly different apps and websites, each serviced by its own account. ”
Problem
There was huge fragmentation among Westfield's products because each product had its own app or website, all of which required separate accounts.
Solution
Create a single app that houses all of Westfield's many features, serviced by a single account. Prioritize the features correctly and tie it all together with a coherent interaction model.
My Role
💭 Concepting. I came up with lots of ideas for how we could organize this app, based on existing research.
🔬 Concept Testing. The team flew to London to see which concepts resonated most with users in the app's first market.
⚒️ Execution (Design Lead). After research, I created a bunch of wireflows that helped engineers build.
💭 Concepting
We needed to organize lots of features
Content
Hundreds of stores, dozens of restaurants, deals, events, movies, and more
Products
Indoor maps and wayfinding, favoriting, personalization
Services
Food ordering, Smart Parking, and future services
👶🏽 How concepts were born
Concepts were often the product of combining frameworks, trends, research insights, data of all sorts (digital, physical, market), and more. Here's an example of how one concept was formed:
Framework: Find Mode
Instead of personas or archetypes, Westfield Labs focusses on "modes" that our visitors find themselves in during different types of mall visits. The find mode is a casual journey through the center that is somewhat focused on finding a specific thing. The visitor is not necessarily as rushed for time, and is open to delightful distractions along the way.
Trend: Need to know today
As our culture moves towards information infinity, we need tools that make sense of the onslaught. "Need to know today" tools such as the Buzzfeed news app offer up a handful of today's highlights in a glance.
Concept: What to do today
This concept was all about offering up relevant highlights to those who were on a mission during their visit, but may be open to a distraction or two. For these visitors, Let’s shortlist the 3 most relevant things based on what we know about them. The "shortlist" theme continued throughout the app.
✔️ Sharing with execs for buy-in
We did that combination about a dozen different times and came up with as many different concepts. We workshopped with the engineers, product managers, and stakeholders on the team. Then, we boiled them down to a handful and we performed a dot-voting exercise with Westfield executives to identify the top 5.
Each board had a title, a zone diagram, a few key screens, and supporting rationale.
Here's a zoom in to some key screens. Execs dot voted on what they liked and didn't like.
The Final 5
From left to right: What to do today, The directory, Concierge chat, Mall diary, and Fashion Advice.
What to do today - A personalized list of mall happenings that may entice the user.
The Directory - A no-nonsense list of all of the available features, with some obvious hierarchy.
Concierge Chat - Instead of creating features for the users to learn, this concept was about giving those features to the mall concierge, and then connecting the concierge to users via a chat app.
Mall Diary - Based largely on an insight that visitors tend to follow the same "loop" of stores during most of their visits, this concept digitizes that loop.
Fashion Advice - Westfield London has a huge editorial team that works on a well-trafficked fashion blog and composes a great quarterly magazine. This concept is about creating a deeply connected editorial app that digitizes the work they're already doing.
🔬 Concept Testing
✈️ Research trip to London!
Time to head to London so we can show these concepts to the people who will be using it first. I planned, presented, and coordinated this trip. During the trip, I conducted the majority of the interviews.
We did a ton during the trip, but here's the 2 key activities:
20 intercepts in 2 malls
We intercepted visitors and asked them to prioritize our planned features via card sorting. This helped us understand which features should get the most airtime in the app.
Action shot of an intercept interview in-progress!
Results of a card sorting activity in the mall.
14 2-hour in-depths
These consisted of homework, a short interview, a shopalong with our 5 concepts, and a codesign activity that consolidated the best parts of our concepts. I moderated 10/14 interviews.
We did interviews in a luxurious space inside of Westfield London called The Style Lounge.
As users critiqued our concepts, we captured notes on actual printouts.
What to do today was the winner
The Initial Concept
A north star I mocked up after the research
What we shipped in May 2016
Surprised that the concept I've told you the most about so far is the one that ultimately won? ;)
The what to do today concept was great stimulus for us to prompt conversations about what types of things users expected for us to suggest. We learned that with so much activity happening in our malls everyday, our malls are like cities, and visitors consequently need a city guide that helps them navigate it. Here's a few more detailed insights:
- With so much happening at our centres, anything can be an event
“I love coming to the mall early on the weekends and watching the sushi chef upstairs cut up the day’s fish.”
Takeaway: We are thinking about events too narrowly. The everyday stuff is worth suggesting. - People’s day is different depending on who they’re with
“If I come to the centre with my mom, it’s sundresses and scones. If I come with my boyfriend, it’s beer and sushi.”
Takeaway: There's potentially opportunity in curating different types of days using our existing content. - FOMO is real
“I’m always missing out on sales. I missed out on a 30% sale at Zara last week and I went bonkers!”
Takeaway: We’re allowed to push notifications as long as they’re useful.
⚒️ Execution
My Deliverables: Wireflows and IA
This is a checkout experience that is shared across services. This wireflows map out how notifications can be customized.
Designing login was a challenge because of some underlying limitations of a 3rd party tool. This diagram explained how to navigate those limitations.
This sitemap communicates priority of content.
This exploratory wireframe suggests how our findings might extend to the website.
Impact
We designed a north star and then the smallest possible first version, which has been released in London UK as of May 2016 to a small group of beta users. We are learning from their usage, making refinements, and continuing to improve the experience.
Other designers
Amir Bahadori (Creative Director)
Any Trejo (Visual Design)