Curated
product design, web design + brand direction
Curated is a digital marketplace with a mission to humanize online shopping. Focusing on high consideration purchases, Curated fosters a community of Experts—real people with passion and knowledge across shopping categories such as outdoor recreational equipment, home goods, baby + toddler products, and more. Customers simply take a short quiz before getting matched with an Expert, who will quickly understand the customer’s unique needs and help them find the perfect product.
This page is highlighting my role on the Expert profiles redesign project and Expert introductions project, two of several UX/UI projects I worked on at the company. Additionally is a video project I worked on supporting marketing efforts on the Google Performance Max platform. For further information about other projects I was involved in, please feel free to reach out.
Projects
Objective
The goal of this project was to refresh the UX and UI of the expert profiles pages to make content more engaging and digestible for potential customers, ultimately boosting conversion rates across leads.
My role
I was responsible for redesigning various sections of the page including: “about me”, activity feed (reviews and social posts), and top recommended items.
Section 1: "About me"
A core concern with this section was digestibility—depending on the length of an expert’s bio, a large amount of information is shown to the visitor at once, which could be overwhelming. To simplify this issue, my approach was to only present a preview of the bio, with the full text available in a clickable modal. This approach also allows more immediate visibility for the quick ”fun facts”. Additionally, the original design lacked an Expert avatar photo, as well as a banner image respective to whatever category the expert is a part of. Including these elements helps establish a visual "brand" for the Expert, which ensures credibility and customer trust.
New Design
Old Design
New Design
Old Design
Section 2: Reviews/Activity Feed
After reviewing various directions, I came to the decision to treat this section as more of an activity feed, which would include content such as an Expert’s instagram posts if they have their profile linked. This helps to break up the feed of reviews and adds more engagement and personality. From a functional perspective, the core issue with the original design is that visitors must continuously click the “view more” button to load more reviews, which only elongates the page and restricts access to the other sections. As a solution, I designed a modal similar to the “about me” section, which presents a more easily accessible navigation across reviews.
New Design
Old Design
New Design
Old Design
Section 3: Top recommended items
The core issue with this section is that top-selling items aren’t immediately exposed to customers—instead they are placed in an arbitrary order so items like snowboards and boots are only presented after scrolling. A better user experience would prioritize item categories so that the most requested products would appear first. Additionally, this section would benefit from having “notes” that an Expert could include about particular products they love. Again, this helps reinforce that Experts are recommending these products for genuine reasons, which ensures customer trust.
New Design
Old Design
New Design
Old Design
Objective
The goal of this project was to maximize customer trust that Experts are real and qualified people, which would ultimately increase conversion rates amongst leads.
My role
I was responsible for design execution of the introduction cards, as well as being heavily involved in project ideation and roadmapping.
Stage 1
We began by running a six week test between a short variant, long variant, and a control group. We ran the test across 75 Experts and roughly 3500 leads within each group. The purpose of this test was to determine whether a succinct or more elaborate card would yield a higher conversion rate, based on various differences across content and layout.
Stage 2
Upon learnings that the short version of the card performed significantly higher than the long version (+12.95% versus +7.31% conversion increase), we began implementing the card across all shopping categories.
Short version
Allows card to fit above the fold, ensuring that other native chat elements are visible immediately
Goal is to establish Expert credibility and trust with the fewest elements needed to drive conversion rate
Results: +12.95% conversion rate
Long version
Allows for more information within the card, such as Expert rating, customers helped, and an image gallery
Goal is to establish Expert credibility and trust with more user engagement within the card itself
Results: +7.31% conversion rate
Results
After running this experiment for three months across 150k+ leads, we received greater clarity regarding the impact of Expert Introductions. Conversion rates matured to +5.7%, supporting our hypothesis that educating leads about their Experts drives conversion. The results of this project gave promise towards other touchpoints of the journey that may benefit from presenting customers with more information about Experts.
Objective
The goal of this project was to highlight Curated’s personalized shopping experience while increasing engagement in the winter sports market through a new advertising format. The project involved footage of winter sports Experts and an engaging animation that illustrated the customer journey—from being matched with an Expert, having a conversation, to receiving personalized product recommendations.
My role
I was responsible for creating and animating simplified UI components to quickly illustrate the Curated customer journey. Given past performance marketing metrics, it was crucial to complete this animated journey in a quick manner. Additionally, I collaborated with another designer in storyboarding and ideating the narrative of this video.
Note: This project was completed before the company's rebrand, so the logo, colors, and other graphic elements differ from those in the projects shown above.
Logo Introduction
Presenting the Curated logo ensures that viewers will immediately be exposed to the brand before the ad narrative begins.
Expert Matching Process
To visually communicate the Expert matching step of the journey after a customer takes the initial quiz, I animated a simple interstitial module showing a few of the many winter sports Experts.
Expert Match
This step of the animation conveys when a customer has successfully matched with an Expert, and the conversation can now begin.
Conversation
After the initial greeting, the Expert can ask more specific questions about the customer's needs and the customer can communicate exactly what they are looking for.
Curation
The curation is when an Expert sends several product recommendations to a customer after learning about their needs. In this step, I animated clicking the "add to cart" button, conveying a successful customer journey.
Action Footage
To further illustrate customer satisfaction after the animated simplified journey, winter sports action footage was integrated into the montage. This footage helps solidify success in the customer's experience with Curated.
Lifestyle Footage
In addition to action footage, lifestyle footage showing happy skiers again helps to reinforce a positive experience with Curated.
Logo End Card
A final end card with the Curated logo and tagline completes the video, reminding viewers of the brand.