THE MAKING
OF A NEW
DESIGN TEAM
AT The RealReal
BRINGING HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN
TO AN ESTABLISHED PRODUCT & TECH ORGANIZATION.
11+ years in—and one IPO later—The RealReal established its first user experience design team within the Product & Technology organization with me as its leader. Reporting to the Chief Product & Tech Officer, I have grown this new team, taken on the definition of our purpose and values, and developed our ways of working at the company, both within our organization and with our business stakeholders.
Under my direction, our design research lead and five product designers have launched numerous product features across desktop, iOS, and mobile web that have improved the customer (and employee) experience and created business value.
2022 SELLER Commission Restructure
One of The RealReal’s most important levers in the pursuit of profitability is its commissions structure. In November 2022, the company changed the commissions model to simultaneously simplify earnings for our customers and improve our take rate.
As part of this initiative, my team was asked to humanize an otherwise daunting spreadsheet of item categories, prices, rates, and earnings to clearly communicate the changes to our customers. Over three weeks, the entire UX design team rallied around this project with stakeholders and our partners in product and engineering, creating countless hand sketches, hosting an internal ideation workshop, prototyping, fielding customer research, and ultimately delivering a pixel-perfect recommendation that could be developed in a sprint. Since launch, customers have been able to clearly understand their loyalty tiers and earnings without a negative impact to our business metrics.
Creating a New Home For Sellers on The RealReal. This snapshot is from an interim meeting in which we socialized our shared vision for a future home for repeat sellers on The RealReal. The project was a true cross-functional collaboration with our partners in merchandising, marketing, customer service, operations, and our leadership team. From brief to concepts and now A/B testing, we’ve brought our stakeholders along for the journey, creating alignment early to expedite development.
EMPOWERING SELLERS WITH INSIGHTS
As part of a larger initiative to improve the selling experience and unlock supply from repeat sellers, the team tapped into our customer base for inspiration and identified a several evocative opportunities for design, namely that customers want to buy and sell smart.
70% of customers want to know what’s selling best
68% of customers want information to become better sellers
Phase 1 of Insights is now live on the site, highlighting trends to unlock the supply we want when we want it. Phase 2, which will connect customers with live data from our marketplace, is under development.
When we established the UX research practice at The RealReal, the company surveyed customers twice per year. As a design team we know that we needed many more points of contact with the customer to get inspired. Our goal was to create a sustainable way of surfacing new ideas, evaluating design directions, and refining our concepts before launch. In collaboration with data science and marketing, we created the Co-Creation Panel, a group of 300+ active customers that reflect our base and participate in both qualitative and quantitative research studies to inform our work. The Co-Creation panel has not only inspired our team but has informed company decision making around pricing, merchandise assortment, commissions, and operations.
TRR CO-CREATION PANEL: DEVELOPING OUR DESIGN RESEARCH ENGINE
PRice review project
Pricing is a top pain point for our sellers and a top reason for them to contact us. Our team designed a new experience to streamline and automate what was previously a manual process.
80% reduction in Price Review contacts since launch
Development of our UX design system and components library to improve front end experience for our customers and developers
A/B testing of new features, including condition scales to set expectations with customers, reduce returns, and decrease customer service touchpoints
TEAM
UX Research (1)
Design, Customer Experience (4)
Design, Admin Tool (1)
Interns (2)