Keep
Keep’s highly rated mobile app is the best way to shop the latest trends in fashion, home decor, accessories, and design. A talented friend of mine had recently joined as an iOS engineer and mentioned their designer abruptly left to travel the world. They needed help designing filters for their search result feature and redesigning their item detail screen.
I soon met Charles Myslinsky, Keep’s Head of Product. Together, we worked to scope out the features in need of attention as well as defining how the work would be executed across product, design, and engineering. Charles’ passion and open-minded nature was a welcomed presence during the entirety of my experience with Keep.
Filtering Search
Search is a conversation where the user tells the system what it wants and the system responds with results. The challenge lies in surfacing the right results to fulfill the user’s intent. Failing to do this results in a disappointed users and a poor experience.
Search is the new navigation.
Keep’s current search was fast and easy to use, but it lacked filters to help the user narrow down the results. Having researched other mobile shopping apps, we noticed a pattern of giving a user too much choice. This bogged down the experience and wasn’t always applicable to the initial query. Our filters needed to be lightweight and support the search instead of distracting the user.
We tested a variety of different interfaces for filtering the search results. These included a panel that slid up from the bottom of the screen, modal, and an inline dropdown. The third tested well but the button felt like a primary action which was at odds with the main purpose of the screen: browsing the search results.
The experience we arrived at was an inline interface that used one of Keep’s existing UI elements. Filter options were kept light by using simple price ranges and a toggle to show or hide out of stock items.
Item Detail Screen
Keep’s item detail screen is where users engage with their search, collections, and recommended products. Charles and the product team wanted to add social proof and the ability to view other items from the same brand or store. The challenge was giving enough weight to the primary action, Buy, but providing the users the ability to access other actions like Keep, or add to collection, and Like, favoriting the item.
For an app that fosters both discovery and purchasing, we needed to give users social proof and the ability to access more items from their favorite brands.
A special thanks to Charles Myslinsky for leading this project and Chamara Paul for introducing me to Keep.
