Improving fundamentals in order to realise a full redesign
Thérapie Clinic (2021 - 2023)
The context:
I worked at Thérapie Clinic as Lead Product Designer from 2021 until 2023. Thérapie represented an enormous opportunity - it’s a brick-and-mortar chain of aesthetic clinics that wanted to revolutionise by ensuring every part of the business was digitally transformed and controlled in-house.
A tech team was brought in to build all the systems that the clinics use from scratch. This included employee systems (like the Diary, booking engines) as well as the websites for the group - including an e-comm engine.
My primary role was to head up the customer-facing websites, while leading the other designers with their projects - ensuring a better design process and alignment.
Being part of an in-house team was a first for me. I settled into the role to build a rhythm around campaigns and service/product launches while designing and planning for bigger items.
Some of the biggest challenges in the role involved educating stakeholders and non-tech teams on new ways of work; graduating from a “family-business” to a well-oiled machine. It didn’t come easy - and the struggle to constantly prove our value, unfortunately, didn’t work out in the short time we were all there.
Along with macro-economic challenges which meant that customers weren’t purchasing luxury services, the decision to downsize the team and move in a different direction affected me along with others.
The results:
Some of the more notable achievements during the period include:
Evaluated and improved the Information Architecture and navigation of the website/s through user testing
Worked with developers to standardise and improve common elements ending years of inconsistency
Optimised templates of pages and sections - leading to quicker development time for marketing as well as dev teams
Supported seasonal campaigns and product launches from Marketing for record sales during Black Friday and Christmas periods
Worked closely with content to design and improve key content like before/after imagery, infographics and comparison tools for a more intuitive experience
Multiple small efforts led to an improvement in conversion rate improvement of 2%
Designed the UX, UI and graphic designs for a full rebrand for launch in the USA (view here) that has since been adopted in the primary UK and Irish markets
My Contribution
I was the lead product designer for the team of 3. Additionally, I was the full-time, sole, individual contributor for the “Growth” team which handled the customer-facing websites for the group’s various brand sites in 3 markets.
I guided and oversaw the design work for the full suite of software: customer websites, customer booking engine, front of house system and customer app/s.
Introduced remote user testing, and oversaw regular in-person testing to get valuable customer insights.
I led the creation and maintenance of the design system and brand guide that has since been adopted across all markets.
An early iteration of the rebrand, showing old v. new homepage
A more advanced version of the UI design
Balancing promo space with navigation needs
Mobile view of a treatment page, with updated brand and design system components
Secondary pages redesigned too
Mobile first designs, balancing complex pricing modules with simplified info
Consistency across templates was important
Pricing modules were a tough challenge since they needed to cater for discounts, loyalty, sessions (v. single prices) across multiple services
We even redesigned icons to represent treatment areas
Mobile designs for homepage
What I enjoyed:
Being part of product strategy and being able to shape the direction of the development team, through a largely autonomous team structure
Fast turnaround times on ideas and concepts. No real bureaucracy and legacy processes to contend with
Embracing MVP and lean mindset; no feature wasn’t re-evaluated and tweaked after launch
Learning to use measurement tools like Google Analytics and Looker to show results of initiatives
Learning and improving on my UI skills
Where I struggled:
Balancing team leadership with being an entrenched individual contributor (where the IC work was full time)
Documentation of success and proof of value - this is something I have improved upon already
Being able to realise my ambitions of introducing Service Design to the business to shape the direction of the suite of software; there was simply no time
Tools I used:
Requirements gathering
User journeys
Wireframes
Prototypes
UI Design
Design System
Content design
CMS management