3min browse / 6min read
Our goals were to optimise Shopee order-related pages and to improve work efficiency with comprehensive, easy-to-edit documents and cross-department collaboration.
01/04
Overview
Shopee order-related pages has been launched in Singapore since 2015, and so far, it has/had served in 19 markets. With the rapid expansion of the business and company, and the conversion of design tools, some problems have arisen, such as the pages’ structure can no longer carry the increasingly complex functions, and the design documents have become out of control.
I was responsible for orchestrating a team of 7 designers and PMs, from planning, to aligning stakeholders on project goals, and implementation. The final goal were to improve user satisfaction, thereby increasing the order conversion rate, and improving product iteration efficiency.
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—— Quick Peek to Shopee Order ——
The scope of this project included buyer and seller sides, mobile and computer, from checkout page, order list page to order detail page with all status and each market.
—— ODP on Web, for Long Years out of Repair ——
Let’s take a look at one of the pages: the order details page. This page had been existed since Shopee launched. As requirements gradually increased and became more complex, it was not optimized. Thus, many problems arose.
02/04
Challenges
There’re two challenges in this project :
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Low Influence (The designer's internal communication work and building relationships with external stakeholders)
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Low Work Efficiency
The reasons for these were the complex company organisation and work process, and the low value identification of the output of the design team.
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—— How to communicate, coordinate and increase designer value ? ——
The main job of Shopee designers are to meet the requirements from PMs. "Designers are just there to make the final product look nice.", this misunderstanding was common in Shopee. On the other hand, this project was launched by me (the designer), so it required more actively work to coordinate the designers and different stakeholders to accomplish it outside of main job, integrate the resources, avoid the work of both sides overlapping and finally increase designer value. Here’s my take on how to be an effective communicator and influencer:
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Clear Goal. Make sure people can understand the goal quickly as everybody was busy and did not have much time. I created a co-editable online excel, broke down the goals into small tasks and estimated completion time, and had a bi-weekly meeting to ensure the project continued to make progress, it included user interviews and UX audit, etc.
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Demonstration. I created expected workflows and templates to designers. I showed how design can improve business to stakeholders.
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Co-Creation. People do not do things 100% my way. I made the things be available for public discussion. It not only led to better solutions, but also made thing can be implemented more smoothly, as everybody is invested in.
Improvement plan / Summarised finding / Interview Script
—— How 3-designers-team serves 19 markets’s design work ？😂 ——
One phrase to sum up what we encountered:
QUICKLY meet diverse cultures and regulations
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To be efficient: We “Design for All”.
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To meet language and cultural differences: We worked with local teams to conduct user research, competitor analysis. Also, keep the design “Flexible”.
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To avoid redoing: We made a “Library” to record all market scenarios to ensure that when new features are added, there are no incongruous designs that need to be redone.
Let’s look at an example of how we achieve “Design for All” and “Flexible”. Below are checkout pages for Singapore and Taiwan. 80% of pages have the same design, while 20% are flexible:
Also, let me share something interesting we found in competitor analysis of the desktop order details page.
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What: Half of its competitors, mainly from Europe and the United States, ODP is more like a receipt page where users can view the main information at a glance, but it only tells you "what you purchased". While, the rest of the competitors, mainly from Asia, although more areas are used to display more detail information, it clearly tells you "what situation you are in and what you can do next".
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Why: This is the result of a combination of factors, including the different logics of thinking and processing between the East and the West, differences in logistics, user expectations for services, etc.
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Which: Since we need "design for all", although Shopee's services include Europe, South America and Asia, we decided to use the "Asia" model, which can meet almost all differences and be more compatible.
Competitors include Taobao, Amazon, Lazada, Tokopedia, JD.com, Zalora, etc.
03/04
Outcome
After four months of effort, we have achieved the following results :
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Designers are not just there to make the final product look nice. The design team now participates in the early stages of the product together with the PM team to think about product direction. I connect the PM and the design team, conduct user interviews every two weeks, and collect user data to continuously optimise the order design.
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There is a “library” of order scenarios and design guideline that can be followed. One file per order page, each containing all market scenarios as well as expected revised designs. They are componentized and available to everyone, not just the order team. Plus, the Order’s design guideline are provided.
One of the file : Seller-Order Details-APP
3. Iterations are already underway. It is divided into two aspects: optimisation and page reconstruction. In terms of optimisation, parts that could cause operational errors have been implemented. In terms of page reconstruction, we have completed the design and continue, with the PM team, to mine more data to fine-tune the final proposal.
Let me take the ODP web page as an example again and see how we redesign it to meet both user needs and business needs:
04/04
Take Away
Design is to serve business, and most designers know that. But many stakeholders just regard design as "beautify". How to resolve and enhance the value of designers and designs? Generally speaking, it's to concretely show business value of design, such as conversion rate and task completion rate that can be directly affected by design, to convince others. What can you do?
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1. Proactively ask questions. Don't just ask superficial requirements questions and be deterred by others saying "designers don't need to care about this", dig deeper into the ins and outs of things, such as why this requirement has the highest priority. Only by understanding the essence of the requirement can we make a better solution.
2. Find deficiencies and fix them. The "deficiency" mentioned here isn't just about design work, but the entire product process. The work between teams often overlaps and complements each other. For example, user pain points that have been underestimated by PMs, and design review that are often ignored by developers.
3. Workplace diplomacy. Chat more with different stakeholders, whether it is a request meetings or casual conversations. Understand what the goals of different teams are, find the same goals for both parties, and get them on your side early on.