“Framer is one of the best web builders I have ever tried. It’s like magic.”
Company
HP
Timeline
2022 - 2023
3D Printing Touch Point Strategy
Thumbtack's break into the Retail industry
Thumbtack is a marketplace that connects customers with pros for home services. We integrate our marketplace inside retailer experiences to help customers get their products installed. I lead the design strategy for retail partnerships, owning the end-to-end customer and pro experiences and defining how we build it at scale.
Thumbtack's break into the Retail industry
The once in a lifetime partnership opportunity
Recently a major home improvement retailer opportunity arose: a pilot to connect their customers to electrical and plumbing pros.
As the lead designer across 2 product development teams, I owned the end to end experience. This involved unpacking the partner's constraints, defining a lean integrated-checkout vision, and mobilizing cross-functional teams to deliver a pilot under a tight timeline.
Defining our North Star and goals
We defined our north star as a seamless, integrated checkout that lets the partner's customers add Thumbtack services with upfront pricing from web or in-store entry points.
Our success metrics were customer LTR and pro fulfillment. I translated these into a high level concept and prototyped an integrated checkout that ensured every interaction was in service of delivering measurable business impact.
Mapping out the integrated experience
To make sense of complex requirements, I led a series of Visual Playbook workshops with internal partners including Product Management, Commercial Strategy, Supply and Service, Engineering, and Business Development as well as the partner's cross-functional team members.
My visual playbooks became the source of truth for the team to align on the multi-sided marketplace interactions and the manual/technical workarounds required to meet customer and pro needs.
Designing, iterating, and validating user flows
I then took the visual playbooks and worked with my Product Manager to define separate projects and PRDs. In addition, I supported a mid-level designer with the design execution on multiple projects.
My ideation process involved competitive analysis and defining a scalable approach for customers and pros to complete these jobs. We validated our designs through prototypes and partner walkthroughs, ensuring we're making the right tradeoffs before handing off to Engineering.
Launching the pilot and learning
Whenever the partner unexpectedly tightened requirements and timelines, I negotiated scope and designed workarounds so the pilot could launch without sacrificing the experience.
I partnered with PM, Eng, DS, and Ops to instrument the pilot with the right feedback channels, prioritized high-impact fixes, and co-drove the phased roadmap for post-pilot improvements and scale.
Final thoughts
Ultimately, I owned the design strategy, shaped the vision, drove cross-functional execution, and built the playbooks and designs that made a pilot with extremely aggressive timelines possible.
We are on track to launch this quarter and set up to gain actionable learnings, a clear roadmap to scale, and a repeatable retail design playbook that I continue to drive as we iterate toward full launch.
Author