Launched in 2014, furniture start-up Brosa set out to change the way Australian consumers designed their homes. Up until then, the interiors retail industry had remained largely undisrupted with many Aussie homeowners preferring to shop in physical stores over digital ones.
By 2017, the company and its user base had expanded rapidly. The product however had struggled to keep up with these new demands. Features had been implemented in isolation, brand identity had become diluted and, as a result, the customer experience felt fragmented and confusing.
Working as the Lead Product Designer and reporting directly to the CEO, I was responsible for instilling and executing a human-centred approach within the business, seeing the product through a full-scale redesign and building its features around the people who use it.
Role: Lead Product Designer
Understanding the customer
Before joining the company, little research had been done into the mindset of a Brosa customer – data that existed was solely numerical and marketing teams relied heavily on Google Analytics.
In order to get a deeper understanding of our customer base, I initiated and conducted an extensive user research study. This included interviewing the internal CX team as well as new and existing Brosa customers. Alongside this, I also ran hour-long workshops with the wider creative team to help educate them on the power of HCD (through the medium of emojis!)
Distilling insights
After conducting these interviews, I distilled the research into key customer insights. Four overarching themes were identified and presented back to the management team, complete with short to long term recommendations about how to tackle each area of concern.
This process not only highlighted the benefit of a human-centred approach within the company, but also resulted in the creation of a dedicated Product Team.
Strategic direction
Working as a stakeholder within the newly formed Product Team, we defined a future-focussed roadmap. This married our customer insights with business requirements and aligned the team on achieving a single vision – “Create a beautiful home, painlessly.”
Designing around needs
As the sole Product Designer, not only was I responsible for moulding the product from a strategic perspective, but also for bringing the UX and UI to life.
New features were always created around customer need and tested at every opportunity. These included an interactive materials module, a mattress finder quiz and a self-service FAQ help section.
Refining the build process
Working with in-house and overseas devs, I helped to define an efficient workflow that met the needs of both teams. Zeplin was used to translate Sketch designs into usable assets and became a central source of truth for both design and dev.
Interaction principles were established and digital guidelines documented to ensure the build was both efficient and consistent.
Outcome
Over the course of 12 months, the business adapted its approach to design and product development and in October 2017, successfully secured $5m of Series B funding.
