MOO
Design Lead . UX . UI . Vision
Unleashing creative strategies to deliver customer-centric transformative growth
MOO has significantly influenced the print industry, emerging as the foremost supplier of premium printed products, including business cards. However, as the landscape evolves towards hybrid work environments and increased digital interactions, MOO recognizes the imperative for a strategic transformation of its products and services.
SERVICES DELIVERED
MOO entrusted my team to guide them through their most recent digital transformation. We led the product discovery, followed by the delivery of a product vision, strategic insights and actions, a high-fidelity prototype, a new Design System, end-to-end customer journey maps, production-ready UI and UX, and a roadmap to get them started on the right path.
CHALLENGE
The project began with understanding MOO’s transformation objectives, beginning with the desire to diversify into new product categories within the branded merchandise space, while unlocking new digital capabilities. Our mission was to envision MOO better and to captivate and engage their new target customer .
This mission encompassed driving revenue and satisfaction from a new younger market and existing customers, focusing primarily on the US. This approach ensures continued revenue from their current customer base while planning MOO’s digital transformation. It prepares for future needs, preferences, and shopping behaviours of a new customer base.
During the initial research phase, we gained fascinating insights into the business through conversations with MOO stakeholders from various sectors, including product, data and insights, marketing, creative, and customer success. Our exploration revealed a wealth of insights, both pain-points and opportunities. We decided to run a number of customer research and design experiments, to understand the desired customer journeys and experiences that would enable the mission.
COLLABORATORS
Taking on the role of Design Lead, I worked alongside a Product Owner and Product Researcher. We had 10 weeks to deliver the vision, so we worked collaboratively at pace, involving key MOO employees, meeting often with the wider business as a CX group, to support, learn, debate, and inspire each other throughout the project.
Together we navigated complexity, and led the way, while coaching, and enabling MOO’s team toward the simple and most valuable approach. Our direct reporting line included Claire Donald, Vice President of Technology and Product, Noha Ghazouani, Director of Product, James North, Creative Director and Corin Mills, E-Commerce Director.
CUSTOMER-CENTRIC PRODUCT CYCLES
Equipped with insights from both an internal (operational) and external perspective (consumer), we pinpointed valuable areas requiring further research. What was most evident was MOO’s generous, and helpful customer success team, working tirelessly to delight customers. This approach contrasted with their online service, which featured broken and fragmented journeys that were somewhat disconnected from the customer.
They also acknowledged that to deliver digital products and services customers love, they needed to improve their product design approach by becoming more customer-focused. This began with weekly customer feedback sessions and insight gathering. To ensure the long-term success of MOO’s product team, we introduced continuous discovery achieved through dual-track discovery and delivery sprints. We also mapped the key end-to-end customer journeys, highlighted promising experiments, and began building an opportunity tree, which greatly improved stakeholder communication and transparency.
KEY CUSTOMER INSIGHTS
We discovered a significant untapped opportunity for MOO, particularly in their Managed Business Services, which generate substantial revenue but remain relatively unoptimised. To understand the problem, we spoke with regular US buyers of branded merchandise and found a growing demand among software companies needing to onboard and invigorate their workforce to attract and retain talent.
Additionally, smaller design-conscious businesses and marketing professionals need new, novel branded merchandise regularly. They struggle with creating product bundles that match their brand due to sourcing from various vendors, leading to mismatched colors, quality, and communication issues. These customers suggested MOO develop an AI-enabled tool to provide curated product bundle recommendations based on their brief, quantities, customer type, event needs, and budget, allowing them to purchase with one click.
STAKEHOLDER ALIGNMENT
Our approach aligned closely with MOO’s business objectives that highlighted the importance of aquiring a new audience across small, medium and large businesses. Our weekly feedback sessions with the C-suite to incorporate additional insights, address concerns, and adjust the direction as necessary. This open and engaging approach enabled us to create a cohesive set of goals that accelerated progress and streamlined our path forward, maintaining momentum throughout the project.
COMMUNICATING OFTEN
At MOO, our approach was characterised by transparency through regular playback sessions with the wider team, collaborative working sessions, and a commitment to working ‘out in the open’ by sharing all our thinking in Notion, every step of the way.
These playback sessions served as a platform for stakeholders to contribute and ensured goal alignment while also providing stakeholders with direct access to customer feedback but also facilitated their active involvement in the process, enabling them to break out of their busy schedules to offer timely feedback on our direction and output, creating a continuous feedback loop. This approach allowed us to break down barriers, and host open discussions, grounded in insight, resulting in better decisions and solutions.
RUNNING EXPERIMENTS
One of our hunches was around the desire of customers to receive more efficient and personalised experiences.
One of the biggest pain points identified in our research was the struggle to find unique and interesting products to customise. Business owners, Marketing professionals, and talent managers expressed a need to receive tailored custom product recommendations as bundles for recurring marketing purposes, client gifting, and workforce engagement. To add to this, they desired suggestions appropriate to the event type, the context, the number of recipients, and their budget.
TESTING HUNCHES
To answer these needs in a fast and intuitive manner we turned to the advancement of AI and the evident appeal of Chat-GPT as told by our testing participants. We created high-fidelity interactive prototypes for testing with our target customers. Through these tests, we uncovered whether a conversational interface could unlock greater customer satisfaction and higher volume, more frequent orders for MOO without the need for a sales assistant during the discovery phase.
Our hunch was successful and we were able to iterate on the product to make it feasible, viable, and even more useful.
PRIORITY USER STORIES
The priority user story we needed to solve was the customer’s need to see a realistic representation of the end product, in the absence of a physical sample. This need was all about securing interest and getting customers to take the first step by uploading their logo and being able to see the product from all angles.
Fulfilling this need would also lead to being able to fulfill further priority needs such as being able to assess different design options, the overall aesthetic appeal, and the quality of the product. Discerning customers also needed to colour-match a range of products, ensure the design aligns with their brand, and share lifelike mockups with peers and collaborators for buy-in and approval of the budget.
E-COMMERCE EXCELLENCE
Clear pricing became a vital customer need. Since the customer journey spanned from initial interest to purchase over a month, we made sure to provide all necessary information upfront instead of surprising customers at check-out. As part of this initial phase of the journey, customers needed to understand lead times and be reassured that the volumes required would be available at the point of purchase.
We also identified the importance of providing design assistance, streamlining purchase order processes, and ensuring frictionless re-ordering with frictionless design updates. All these initiatives would cumulate to enhance the overall customer experience, end-to-end.
