Re-Up
An app that lets customers recycle preloved goods through their original brands
Role
Senior Designer
Design team
3 designers
Time
4 months
Company
Recomme
Problem
Recomme’s recycle proposition, Re-Up, was a B2B proposition that enabled fashion and retail businesses and their customers to easily recycle their end-of-life products – increasing their sustainable footprint and providing fashion brands with data and reporting.
Their product needed to support customers who would recycle their no-longer-needed clothes through their original brands.
They didn’t have a preexisting product and wanted to move at a rapid speed, with a POC delivered in 6 months.
Solution
To create a customer-facing app and an internal platform for the recycling centre. It would allow users to recycle clothes easily, with minimal friction.
My role
I joined this project as a senior designer to research, design and validate a customer-facing app. I led foundational research and synthesised its findings. I then defined personas and user groups and created user journeys to enable a smooth design phase. I proceeded by creating wireframes, designs, and prototypes that were validated and adjusted during usability testing sessions.
Personas
I started by creating provisional personas of a potential Re-Up user based on the research provided by the client and additional online research. These personas then got validated throughout usability testing sessions with users.
Journey mapping
I started by creating a generic user journey to give myself an idea of what users would expect from the app.
I then created further journey maps for each of the personas. That allowed me to see what unique needs, pains, and opportunities they might have throughout the journey.
Designing a simple process
I began by sketching and then designing a simple journey that would require the user to complete six steps:
-
Provide their details
-
Choose items they want to recycle
-
Enter their postcode details
-
Choose a shipping option
-
Provide their card details
-
Receive a shipping label
After running initial usability sessions with users, it became apparent that the order of steps within the journey didn’t satisfy user needs. They were frustrated when asked to fill in details at the beginning of the process.
Following their feedback, I’ve changed the order of the steps. And A/B tested both approaches. It resulted in 89% of users preferring the new, reversed flow.
Design validation
Some of the users who belonged to the Sustainable Sally persona questioned the transparency of the process and were concerned with the “greenwashing” (misleadingly promoting as environmentally friendly) and required additional information before they felt comfortable using the service.
To accommodate their concerns, I’ve added a FAQ section and provided every question with an explanation.
When retested with the same participants, this new approach improved their confidence in the app.
Gamification
One of the main feedback questions that came from most of the users during usability testing was the quantifiable outcome of their choices.
Recomme was already looking into partnering with a carbon offset company. We decided to bring it forward, making it apparent and presenting carbon offset in a gamified way. This implementation improved customer satisfaction from 20% at the initial tests to 65% after the “tree counter” was added.
Moments of delight
Adding screens with animations and short messaging addressing environmental issues received positive feedback during our usability sessions.
This hypothesis would need to be further researched, designed, and tested with the actual audience when the product goes live.
Learnings
Designing at a rapid pace occasionally led to overlooking apparent flows. I was fortunate to have time for usability testing sessions that allowed me to reflect on my decisions and adjust throughout the process.
If I worked on this project again, I would spend more time optimising the “adding to basket” experience and research options for in-app notification capability.
