Introduction

Summer of 2022, I completed a UX internship at BORN Group - an award winning, global agency that helps luxury brands with digital transformation. They specialize in eCommerce, digital transformation, creative strategy and IT consulting. The London office assigned me to work with retainer clients Swarovski and La Prairie.

Brief

BORN Group was asked to identify UX opportunities, trends and best practices for how to redesign Swarovski's Navigation across digital touchpoints.

Competitor analysis allowed me to visualise the market stand point of Swarovski against other successful eCommerce companies, as well as other luxury brands. This table was used across client presentations.

Key Takeaways

• Biggest UX trends in eCommerce currently - Gamification, AR/VR, Personalisation, Customisation, Integrated Social media
• Biggest trends in Navigation of other luxury brands - First level navigation to include wishlist, basket, search and log in. Search flyout. Automated suggested search. Simple Country flyout
• Biggest competitor / inspiration - Tiffany and Co

Key Constraints

• Sticking to the client's design system when making wireframes
• Being on brand with the client's values and missions
• Inability to test immediately - agency needs approval of designs = long process

Final Deliverables

I was tasked to make a series of 8 A/B tests of Navigation features that will be tested in the coming months by Swarovski internally. Here are two.

Lessons Learned

• In depth knowledge about the luxury consumer is extremely important in knowing how to design the right thing
• Agency projects happen at a high speed since there are multiple projects happening throughout the year - keeps it exciting!
• Real world projects take way longer to implement than I had expected (months!) 
• Agencies do not get as much creative freedom as academic settings, briefs were very specific