How partnering with content can raise the bar of product design
Senior Product Designer Şeyda Ülgen and Principal Content Designer Jemima Leathwood-Hill share how working hand-in-hand led to the success of a high-priority project, inspiring future collaborations.
A problem shared is a problem halved. When we are working under constraints such as a tight deadline or ambiguity, often the best thing we can do is team up, combining our expertise to strengthen the solution. Collaborating with other functions helps us see beyond our personal experience. We combine our unique perspectives of what is best for the customer, learn from each other, and foster mutual support.
As Rebekah Cancino, Content Strategy and UX Consultant, argues in her InVision article, Next-level collaboration: the future of content and design, openness on many levels is key to cross-functional collaboration. We must welcome each others’ ideas and skills, get comfortable with not knowing all the answers, share ownership, cultivate empathy and, as Zalando’s Founding Mindset notes, put purpose before ego. This leads to us creating our best products — better than any discipline could create alone.
When Şeyda Ülgen, Senior Product Designer in our Profiles & Personalization Experience team, received a high-priority brief to help our customers navigate new entry points in the Zalando User Account, she knew the best route to the solution was to partner up. Jemima Leathwood-Hill, Principal Content Designer, has become a go-to content expert, specializing in bringing clarity and direction to many design projects.
“Şeyda contacted me just hours after she’d been assigned the project, on the recommendation of Director of Product Design Gloria Rupprecht,” Jemima recalls. “Şeyda was so open from day one, getting us on the same page by walking me through exactly what she did and didn’t know. Content Designers are integrated into the product design process at Zalando, but Şeyda took it to the next level. She made us co-designers. That was special and very fun too!”
The pair’s story demonstrates how partnerships between product design and content design lead to impactful results. It is also a great example of the #LearnDoShare framework that consistently raises the bar at Zalando, illustrating three key aspects of professional growth. As Jemima explains, “Learn, do, share is our philosophy on how we partner up to get things done, embrace what we don’t know, learn as we go, and share with the community to enable others.”
What did Şeyda and Jemima do to succeed in this challenging project? And how did they share their learnings to inspire future collaborations between product design and content design? Read on to find out.
Learn — acquiring knowledge
2021 at Zalando was marked by a significant expansion of our Beauty experience, including many exciting new personalized features. Some of these, such as Beauty Items and Beauty Subscriptions, needed to be intuitively integrated into the User Account so that customers could easily access and manage them. However, it wasn’t as simple as adding them to the existing menu.
The number of entry points in the User Account had been stacking up over time. As a result, the space lacked a clear information hierarchy and defined content themes. To optimize usability, the User Account navigation needed an overhaul — within a timeline of just a few weeks. “The clock was ticking,” Jemima reflects. “Instead of working asynchronously with the typical project check-ins, we had to work together when we met. It was exciting.”
“Each meeting, we asked, ‘How are we doing this?’ and we made every decision together.”
Jemima immediately tackled uncertainty by doing what she does best: asking the right questions. “We decided to zoom out and ask, ‘What is a user account?’ and ‘What principles can drive what we do from here on out?’,” she reflects. “We brainstormed everything that would help us devise a design customers would understand. This set our collaboration in motion. Each meeting, we asked, ‘How are we doing this?’ and we made every decision together.”
Drawing from their individual expertise, each designer contributed a principle they regularly work with. Following the ‘Above the Fold’ content design principle would ensure all important information was in view when customers opened the User Account. ‘Give Control’ is used by Product Designers when designing with data. Customers own their data at Zalando. Therefore it needs to be easy to access and manage in the User Account.
Another starting point was to consider how customers were already using the space and the business priorities connected to the existing entry points. “We learned from our Product Analysts that a significant proportion of User Account page visits sought to accomplish a common task such as tracking or canceling orders and returning items,” Şeyda explains. “We came together with our stakeholders to look at overarching business strategies. For example, Zalando Plus, our premium membership program, is a major element of the User Account. We needed to keep a close eye on its findability and discoverability. In this regard, this project was a good example of finding the right balance between business and customer needs.”
Do — testing and iterating
Of course, since the Beauty features were new additions, there was no data to help Jemima and Şeyda locate them among the existing strategic priorities. To gain a clearer picture of how customers might navigate the updated space, they quickly completed some user research.
“I put all of the elements of the User Account in front of the customers and created an open card-sorting exercise where they grouped them into themes,” Şeyda explains. “Based on these content clusters, we came up with a prototype and prepared a first click test to assess the findability and discoverability of the content. We ran it over the weekend and, on Monday, we started iterating the solution based on the insights we collected.”
The click test allowed Şeyda and Jemima to evaluate whether the proposed navigation and linking structure was effective in helping users complete their intended task. One telling insight involved naming. “The click test showed that returns were not easy for customers to find in the User Account,” Şeyda says. “The section that housed them was originally named ‘Orders,’ which we subsequently changed to ‘Orders and returns.’” The data also showed that simply using ‘Subscriptions’ to navigate to beauty subscriptions worked well.
“There was a lot of overlap between our expertise — like a Venn diagram.”
Harnessing the insights, Jemima and Şeyda created a solution that reflected both customer needs and business priorities. As an external UX audit by Baymard Institute reported in November 2022, the Zalando User Account navigation scores highly for usability. It noted that its good performance lies in “the clear and consistent layout of the account dashboard and information hierarchy, where it’s easy to get an overview of the different account features at a glance and to perform account management tasks efficiently.”
The designers attribute much of the project’s success to their collaborative approach. They navigated initial uncertainty by zooming out, questioning their assumptions, combining their expertise, and making design decisions together. And they avoided any losses of time or momentum by working in a synchronized manner.
“We were looking at the same goal through different lenses,” says Jemima. “I was considering the clarity, coherency, and consistency of the new navigation and how to help customers understand the new features at a glance, even if they hadn’t visited them before. Şeyda was focusing on the discoverability and findability of the elements by planning and running the card sorting and first click test study. Information hierarchy was at the center of our collaboration so, naturally, there was a lot of overlap between our expertise — like a Venn diagram.”
Share — inspiring future partnerships
In December 2022, Şeyda and Jemima presented their learnings to Zalando’s content design community in a knowledge-sharing session. They shared how the two disciplines harmonize and collaborate well together. They also walked the Content Designers through their user-testing setup, providing examples and guidance on how to run experiments, as well as copyable templates. Inspired by Jemima and Şeyda’s results, more Content Designers have begun running click tests. Best of all, their story has lit the way for future partnerships.
“The content design team grew a lot last year,” says Jemima. “There are still many more Product Designers than Content Designers at Zalando. However, it is easier to work hand-in-hand than it has ever been. When Content Designers are involved from the beginning of the design process, we start with the same information as our product design counterparts. Not only can we shape the strategy, but we do not have to spend time getting up to speed, which we could be using working together. Our cursors were dancing together in Figma — it was such a joy. We also had the full context to defend our decisions together in review sessions. It was proper teamwork with a high-five at the end!”
Şeyda believes that documenting their ways of working added to their impact. “We included a section in the solution design documents about how we approached the problem, the principles we devised to help us, and how they influenced the decisions we made together.”
“We gave each other a massive hug because of all we’d been through together!”
The duo both agree that their collaboration was one of the best they experienced at Zalando — and it took place completely remotely. The first time they met in person was at an office event. “We gave each other a massive hug because of all we’d been through together!” Şeyda smiles. “Product Designers and Content Designers are in the same boat. By partnering up, we can significantly improve the customer experience — and level up our expertise.”
Are you a Product Designer who has partnered up with a Content Designer, or vice versa? We would love to hear your success stories in the comments. Next, Jemima shares her collaboration-focused tips to elevate design principles.
