Secret Sales is a globally platform based in the UK, that is fast becoming the No.1 destination to buy must-have fashion and sport-wear items alongside homeware essentials and luxury cosmetics at affordable prices.
The company needed a Tagging Interface to be able to find, select and tag the hundreds of thousands of product that will go on Flash Sales and be able to change their price automatically.
Secret Sales wanted to revamp its strategy and emphasise its market place position. Hundreds of thousands of goods would be available in special “flash sales”. The 20 Buyers and the Head of Buyers need an interface where they can quickly find, select and tag the products for the flash sales and change their price if needed. The price would automatically change on the new Brand Store pages.
This tagging interface would be populate via a Content Management System (CMS) and should be designed to be created by the development team in less than 3 weeks.
Such a project doesn’t exist without a few constraints. Here are the 3 main challenges I was facing before even starting to design a solution:
Tagging thousands of products could be extremely complicated if we don’t frame the problem first. With Andrew Christodoulou, The Head of Product, we thought of doing some user stories to have a better idea of what should be done for a first release.
How exciting! I know what I need for this first project. A tagging interface that would allow the buyers to:
1. Create a tag for a Flash Sale
2. Delete a tag when the Flash Sale finishes
3. Manage the items to be tagged and filter them
4. Change the price of filtered items
Even though this is a first iteration of a product (MVP), I have to think that this product will evolve. I shadowed the Head of Buyers to know how she was using the CMS. I did several prototypes on paper and went several times to confront my discoveries with the Head of Product and the Head of Buyers. We agreed then on the last version (shorter and more scaleable).
I took time to create all my Lo-Fi prototypes. No colours nor font chosen yet. Only a structured product will the right information architecture. I created a prototype in Invision and UsabilityHub and asked 5 buyers of Secret Sales to test the product internally.
The 5 participants followed a scenario I designed for them and answered a few questions afterwards.
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Now that I knew all the pain points due to the testing, it was time to improve the product and tailor it for the buyers with an original brand identity. The buyers told me they wanted something different than the green Secret Sales. After talking with the Head of Product, we agreed on implementing another identity as it was only an internal tool. I was thinking designing something playful, colourful, that reminds the imaginary. As it was an internal tool, I kept it extremely simple, straightforward with no disturbing elements.
With the small brand identity I created I opted for a minimalist design. A few interactions when a buyer is filtering the items, and popups when he/she wants to change the price of a good. A light design, as at that time the dark mode wasn’t such famous as now. 30+ screens have been designed for such a project.
Each time I’m designing a product I think of the value of doing a Hi-Fi prototype of my designs. I’m a big fan of creating some videos for the developers with some guidelines for the interactions (duration of the fading transition, type of bezier curve, etc.). In general they really appreciate it (after laughing at me when I’m explaining what I want to do with the animations).
The tagging interface has been coded by the development team in 3 weeks as we agreed, and everyone in the Buyers team were extremely happy!
That was the first time I was designing an interface populated via a CMS, and it was such an enriching experience. If I had to design a similar project I would insist more on the shadowing sessions as it was the part I received the most valuable feedbacks. My knowledge of the CMS wasn’t good enough to be able to design it perfectly alone. Working more hand by hand with the buyers would have been a good solution.
On a visual perspective, the designs are “naked”. It’s a MVP but I could have galvanised a little more my designs with illustration and maybe a dark mode. To give more contrast between the different elements. That’ll be for next time!
