Trends To Action
From a single-brand pilot to an AI-powered enterprise-scale e-commerce merchandising platform, this initiative aims to close the gap between the speed of social trends and the pace of e-commerce merchandising.
Role: Experience Design & Strategy Lead
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AI, E-Commerce, Innovation
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Role: Experience Design & Strategy Lead 〰️ AI, E-Commerce, Innovation 〰️
If we could surface real-time trend signals from social media and search, and connect them directly to a brand's product catalog, we could create an on-site experience that met shoppers at the moment of cultural attention, and converted that attention into engagement and purchase.
The Hypothesis
Strategic Pillar
Trends, Cultural Relevance, Speed to Market
My Role & Team
Experience Design & Design Strategy Lead (Innovation Team)
- Client team (MAC Cosmetics), 2 Designers, 1 Researcher, 2 Producers,
2 Engineers, 1 Tech Vendor
Timeline
Design & Development: 6 Months
Pilot: 12 months
Pilot Key Features
The technology
Working with our technology partner, we developed a proprietary workflow, connecting trend data to brand’s product catalogs to match trends to relevant products and shades. This AI-enabled workflow allowed us to decrease time spent on merchandising products for trends by more than 75%.
UX Features
12-Month
Engagement metrics
Time on site: shoppers exposed to the trends experience spent significantly longer exploring
+58%
Conversion rate: trend shoppers converted at a higher rate than the control (search only)
+19%
Average order value: shoppers spent more per transaction when discovery was trend-driven
+9.6%
Single Trend Metric
+74%
+87%
increase in total sales for Glossy eyelid trend related products compared to 1 year prior
increase in total sales for Glossy eyelid trend related products compared to 1 month prior
Pilot To Product Roadmap
The metrics gave the organization the confidence to move from pilot to product.
Matching trending looks to brand products
Matching trending ingredients to brand products
Contextual content and user-generated content
PILOT | [NOW]
Trends to Product
PRODUCT | [NEXT]
Multi-category dashboard that is scalable across brands
Tools to action trends in real time: Analyze trends, create and execute marketing campaigns, edit products and UGC, one-click push to site
Corporate level trend insights across brands and categories
Trends to Action
FUTURE
Create micro-segmentation data sets to enhance personalization
Scale Trends to Action platform to Global Markets
Provide Product Development the insights to forecast future trends, influence product assortment and marketing spend
Future & Personalization
Productization Process
Timeline: 9 Months
AI Merchandising Architecture
To make this platform work at an efficient enterprise scale, it must function as an intelligent middleware layer.
By structuring the platform as an orchestration layer, we are able to collapse the timeline from insight to execution from weeks to minutes, enabling marketing teams to action trends in real-time.
Product Architecture
The platform was designed around two core capabilities: an AI-enabled data intelligence layer and a brand work environment. Together, they let a brand team go from trend signal to live on-site experience with minimal friction.
Product UX
Dashboard UI
Trend Dashboard Overview
Trend Details, Product matching & UGC
Edit trend details before publishing to site
Acting as a strategic co-pilot, this context-aware AI feature analyzes the trends you are viewing to help marketing teams to brainstorm targeted campaign concepts. It seamlessly translates real-time data into ready-to-use strategic assets, instantly generating tailored creator briefs and marketing documents.
AI Trend Assistant
Outcome & Lessons Learned
The pilot (test and learn) was the evidence that gave the productization work legitimacy. Every decision in the enterprise platform design had the pilot results to point back to.
The shift from pilot to product was a different kind of design challenge entirely. With the pilot, I optimize for one consumer-facing context. The B2B platform required designing for many contexts simultaneously, while juggling the diverse business needs of a multi-brand, global organization.
Delivered
Launch & Adoption
Dashboard live by Q4 FY23
Brand & Corporate User Manual
1 Corporate team
1 Pilot brand: MAC
Followed by 2 additional brands within 3 months
Key Metric
80%
reduction in time-to-launch of new trends on brand.com
Role: Experience Design Lead, Experience Strategy (Innovation Team)
Team: 2 jr. designers, project manager, engineering team, technology vendor, 2 executive stakeholders
Deliverables: Product pilot · experience audit · Prioritized recommendations
Tags: AI-powered Trends, Enterprise Dashboard