Veja 'Impact'
4 Week Project - Spring 2019
Veja Impact
4 Week Project - Spring 2019
A microsite that leverages the offering of shoe care tips as a way to ease customers into exploring sustainable materials. 
It aims to gradually transition casual sneaker buyers into direct supporters of sustainable initiatives.
A microsite that leverages the offering of shoe care tips as a way to ease customers into exploring sustainable materials. It aims to gradually transition casual sneaker buyers into direct supporters of sustainable initiatives.
My Role.
My Role
User Research, Product Strategy, Sprint Coordinator, Low to High fidelity prototyping, User Testing, Business + Domain Research
User Research, Product Strategy, Sprint Coordinator, Low to High fidelity prototyping, User Testing, Business + Domain Research
Brand Context 
Brand Context
Veja is a growing European footwear brand focusing on a balance between fashion and sustainability. Due to their use and support for premium sustainable materials, free trade and ethical suppliers, they take on six times the average sneaker manufacturing cost versus leading industry alternatives (Nike, Adidas etc.)
A disconnect between Veja and their customer base
Veja's ideal customer base and brand ideology center around individuals who support sustainability and anti-consumerism. They currently have a large existing casual customer base buying their sneakers solely for collection and style purposes without knowing the deep sustainable process behind each of their purchased sneakers.
An opportunity 
We saw the opportunity to leverage this growing casual customer base to establish a level of involvement that aligns with Veja's sustainability-driven brand mission.
Isolating 'sustainability interest' within a persona spectrum.
Persona spectrum.
After conducting interviews with Veja customers and doing further secondary research, we realized that there is no 'average' persona to cover the entire Veja customer base.
To categorize and compare the Veja customers' varying views towards sustainability, we segment the customer base into three levels of interest based on our interview insights.
01 Indifferent to sustainability 
The individual who is indifferent and actively ignores sustainable activities.
02 Partially sustainable 
The individual that occasionally partakes in low-effort sustainable activities. (ex. recycling)
03 Sustainability advocate 
The individual who is sustainable through all of their daily consuming and living habits.
The majority of customers fell under the indifferent category and the question became how we can transition this type of customer into a partially sustainable or fully sustainable customer. This directly translated into our frame.
To categorize and compare the Veja customers' varying views towards sustainability, we segment the customer base into three levels of interest.
01 Indifferent to sustainability
The individual who is indifferent and actively ignores sustainable activities.
02 Partially sustainable
The individual that occasionally partakes in low-effort sustainable activities. (ex. recycling)
03 Sustainability advocate
The individual who is sustainable through all of their daily consuming and living habits.
The majority of customers fell under the indifferent category and the question became how we can transition this type of customer into a partially sustainable or fully sustainable customer. This directly translated into our frame.
Frame.
How might we engage the casual customer base to be more involved in sustainability?
We didn't want to force sustainable brand ideologies and information towards the customer as it will only push an already sustainability-indifferent customer even farther away so this directly lead to a reframe.
Reframe.
How might we use a digital platform to introduce and ease the casual customer to be gradually more involved in sustainability?
Customer research insights 
To further gain perspective and insights on the sustainability indiffferent customer, we distributed surveys on various forums and subreddits combined with further user interviews with existing veja sneaker buyers. From this research portion, we were able to synthesize four driving insights to give us direction in the sprint prototyping process.
01 Casual sneaker buyers expressed a high interest in 'shoe care tips' as follow-up information to their sneaker purchase.
02 Majority of casual sneaker buyers preferred post sale follow-up prompts to be in the form of an email versus other options (phone-text / shoe box qr code / checkout pop-up).
04 Casual sneaker buyers won't go out of their way to engage in physical sustainable events and campaigns but are willing to partake in online petitions
05 Customers were more likely to repurchase Veja shoes after learning about their use of high-quality sustainable materials in the shoes.
Customer Journey.
We position our intervention directly at the customer's point of purchase. This is to not only extend post-sale value but to provide content that can be paired alongside their purchase confirmation email. Customers were more inclined to engage with a follow-up prompt if it associates with a recent purchase they've made.
Proposing Veja 'Impact'.
We propose a digital post-sale experience, Veja impact that leverages the offering of practical shoe care instructions as a way to ease customers into exploring the unique sustainable materials used behind their product.
The platforms aims to enable the customer to gradually discover, explore and participate in sustainability and hopefully inspire an interest to support sustainable initiatives beyond even the scope of Veja itself.
Proposing Veja 'Impact'.
We propose a digital post-sale experience, Veja impact that leverages the offering of practical shoe care instructions as a way to ease customers into exploring the unique sustainable materials used behind their product.
The platforms aims to enable the customer to gradually discover, explore and participate in sustainability and hopefully inspire an interest to support sustainable initiatives beyond even the scope of Veja itself.
Delivering value on three levels.
The strategy is designed with three levels of engagement in mind to not only gradually ease the casual customer into sustainability but to ensure they're recieving value offerings at every stage regardless of if they end the experience early.
Prototype testing change 01.
Issue: Testers didn't know what exact sections of the shoe the circled highlights were referring to.
Change: Reorder the placement of the navigation and implement a vector drawing that highlights the sections of the shoe to improve visual clarity
Prototype testing change 02.
Issue: Testers expressed that they didn't want to read a big block of text to learn how to maintain the materials in their shoe suggesting that there's high cognitive overhead involved in the tips.
Change: Design the care tips into a scrollable visual interaction with steps listed in a card format to make instructions easier to digest.
Entry Point
Email follow-up post purchase.
Driven from the two research insights of 'casual sneaker buyers expressing a high interest in shoe care tips as follow-up information to their sneaker purchase' and sneaker buyers preferring follow-up prompts to be in the form of an email.
We lead with the offering of shoe care tips in the form of a post-sale email to yield the highest click-through rate from the customer.
Entry Point
Email follow-up.
Driven from the two research insights of 'casual sneaker buyers expressing a high interest in shoe care tips as follow-up information to their sneaker purchase' and sneaker buyers preferring follow-up prompts to be in the form of an email.
We lead with the offering of shoe care tips in the form of a post-sale email to yield the highest click-through rate from the customer.
Discover
Priming customers to discover while learning.
Scrollable card-style care tips enable customers to easily digest the instructions while a vector drawing navigation enables them to pick the sections of their newly purchased shoe.
This page acts as a discovery point for customers to first discover the unique sustainable materials used in each section of their shoe while they're learning shoe care tips.
Discover
Priming customers to discover while learning.
Scrollable card-style care tips enable customers to easily digest the instructions while a vector drawing navigation enables them to pick the sections of their newly purchased shoe.
This page acts as a discovery point for customers to first discover the unique sustainable materials used in each section of their shoe while they're learning shoe care tips.
Explore
This "fish leather" shoe is superior to my nikes?
We use the commonly asked question of "Why this sustainable material?" from user interviews as the call to action content to interest the customer to explore deeper into the unique material. (In this case, the example case is fish leather.)
Exploring the materials story section then allows customers to learn the impacts and benefits of the sustainable material used and why it's superior to the leading non-sustainable alternative.
Explore
This "fish leather" shoe is superior to my nikes?
We use the commonly asked question of "Why this sustainable material?" from user interviews as the call to action content to interest the customer to explore deeper into the unique material. (In this case, the example case is fish leather.)
Exploring the materials story section then allows customers to learn the impacts and benefits of the sustainable material used and why it's superior to the leading non-sustainable alternative.
Participate
Connecting customers to become direct supporters.
The guiding call to the action within the materials story section enables customers to directly participate and support sustainable movements relevant to the section they've just learned about through the signing of a quick petition.
This design decision was driven by the insight that casual sneaker buyers won't go out of their way to engage in physical sustainable campaigns but are willing to partake in online petitions.
Participate
Connecting customers to become direct supporters.
The guiding call to the action within the materials story section enables customers to directly participate and support sustainable movements relevant to the section they've just learned about through the signing of a quick petition.
This design decision was driven by the insight that casual sneaker buyers won't go out of their way to engage in physical sustainable campaigns but are willing to partake in online petitions.
What value offerings are provided for each side?
For Customers.
01 Customer gain free access to tangible knowledge on how to maintain the premium materials used in their sneakers.
For Veja.
01 The platform allows Veja to leverage both new and existing customers to directly support online movements that align with their brand mission such as advocating for the use of sustainable materials and fair trade.
02 Brand loyalty is developed as customers begin to learn about the superior materials used in Veja shoes versus the industry leading alternatives leading to an increased repurchase rate KPI.
What value offerings are provided for each side?
For Customers.
01 Customer gain free access to tangible knowledge on how to maintain the premium materials used in their sneakers.
For Veja.
01 The platform allows Veja to leverage both new and existing customers to directly support online movements that align with their brand mission such as advocating for the use of sustainable materials and fair trade.
02 Brand loyalty is developed as customers begin to learn about the superior materials used in Veja shoes versus the industry leading alternatives leading to an increased repurchase rate KPI.
Tough personas only means deeper research.
For this project, tackling the problem of how we were going to engage the sustainability indifferent persona was a challenge. Not only did the project have to able to ease this type of customer into exploring sustainable materials, but I had to make sure the intervention provided value both to this type of customer and aligned with Veja's brand pillars.
To overcome this challenge, it was essential to allocate more time to conduct thorough user research through a diverse range of methods as the synthesized insights directly translated into direction for the sprint + prototyping process. Our driving research insight of shoe buyers wanting sneaker care tips as post purchase information came from an assemblement of sources. (Surveys we distributed on shoe brand forums / subreddits and user interview answers)
Thank you to Claire Huang, Ling Pan and Emmanuel Ebhota for working on this project together.
Tough personas only means deeper research.
For this project, tackling the problem of how we were going to engage the sustainability indifferent persona was a challenge. Not only did the project have to able to ease this type of customer into exploring sustainable materials, but I had to make sure the intervention provided value both to this type of customer and aligned with Veja's brand pillars.
To overcome this challenge, it was essential to allocate more time to conduct thorough user research through a diverse range of methods as the synthesized insights directly translated into direction for the sprint + prototyping process. Our driving research insight of shoe buyers wanting sneaker care tips as post purchase information came from an assemblement of sources. (Surveys we distributed on shoe brand forums / subreddits and user interview answers)
Thank you to Claire Huang, Ling Pan and Emmanuel Ebhota for working on this project together.
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Product Design - Case Study
User Research / Branding