Project Role:
Sr. Product Designer
Responsibilities:
- Definition of product design principles
- Systematic architecture design
- Interaction prototype explorations
- Full product UX flows & design direction
- Guide quant/qual research
Team Composition:
Leadership: 1 PM, 1 TL, 1 UX (me)
Design: 1 UX designer (me)
Eng: 1 front-end engineer, 3 software engineers
Research / Success Metrics:
Quantitative: Increased Training Activity
Qualitative: Improved understanding of “Expert Rank”
01 Product Background
One of the major goals for Experticity was quantifying and qualifying Product Expertise and to do that we focused heavily on what we called the Expert Profile.
Problem: Rank product “experts” by category and facilitate tools to demostrate said expertise.
02 Product Explorations
Expert Rank & Score
Qualifying everyday experts across multiple categories of interest
We did many explorations around how to summarize the “Expert Rank” to help experts on the platform better understand how they measured up to everyone else.
This is also where we helped experts understand how their rank effected the discounts they recieved from brands within different industries. The higher their rank is a category such as “Hunt” or “Automotive” their higher their benefits from the brands in that category.
The 3 Pillers of Expertise: Pillar 1 — Knowledge
Brands that everyday product experts had taken trainings on and had been certified experts.
Experts wanted a clear understanding of how that was calulated and what they needed to do to effect change in it to their benefit. We provided them with badges and a ranking based off performance in their knowledge through educational curriculm, products owned, and professional expertise.
The more they learned about the products they sold the more points they earned toward discount benefits from brands. If they scored 100% on the quizes after learning they received “certified expert” badges for specific brands. Experts found a lot of intrinsic value from earning these badges.
The 3 Pillers of Expertise: Pillar 2 — Products Owned
Products that everyday experts physically owned.
By showing what products the experts owned, it increased the influence they had on other shoppers and helped qualify them as more experienced when it comes to the reviews or recommendations of products they gave to customers.
For example, shoppers would trust experts more if they were looking for a road bike and they could see the bikes that the expert owned. Making their opinion matter more than those that were just knowledgable about products but that had never used or had experience with it.
Initially we pulled products that experts had purchased through Experticity and we could verify that they owned the products. We also wanted to allow experts to upload products they’d purchased somewhere else to extend the expertise outside the Experticity platform.
The 3 Pillers of Expertise: Pillar 3 — Experience
Places everyday experts have worked
Helping experts show their expertise through the platform also allowed them to prove their expertise. Showing that they’d worked with a brand or was a professional athlete added gave both them as experts an added benefit to deeper discounts from brands but also stronger credibility among shoppers.
03 Product Learnings
What we learned.
Experts really valued their discounts from the brand and were always confused when they lost access to their discounts because they needed to continue learning about the brands.
Experts wanted to find ways to get deeper discounts and earlier access to products they loved.
Experts are competitive. They would boast to friends about how many certified expert badges they’d earned and for how long they’d maintained it.
Experts bought product from a variety of locations (online, retail, friends) and wanted ways to show their expertise that was outside out platform.
