Our teams are constantly inspired with new and creative ideas – but that doesn’t mean every idea will work. What really matters is that they are good for the customer and improve their experience. We invest effort in small tests to see how the customer reacts, and allow the customer be the advocate.
Greg Schuler
Head of UX Design, Gap Inc.
It's important to get a strong signal from the customer. People look at me funny when I say ‘I hope this A/B test goes well, or I hope it really fails.’ That kind of data helps us learn and improve our products.
Scott Noblit
Director of Interaction Design, Gap Inc.
We spoke with Greg Schuler, Head of UX Design, Nicole Torgersen, UX Creative Director, and Scott Noblit, Director of Interaction Design, to learn more about how Gap Inc. approaches design online and in-store.
Evolutionary and Revolutionary
At Gap Inc., design projects are often categorized as “Evolutionary” or “Revolutionary.” Evolutionary projects are focused on incremental improvements and are staffed by the centralized team, which meets frequently and has domain knowledge of the problem. Evolutionary teams are more fluid than Revolutionary ones.
Revolutionary projects generally explore new spaces and try to learn about them. They are focused on finding new product opportunities, and testing new hypotheses about customers. Revolutionary teams might stick together for a year and are called Core Teams.
With Revolutionary design, we really look at the space itself, and say, ‘We don’t really know a lot about this space...let’s be humble and go out and learn how people are interacting with our brands [and our products]’.
Greg Schuler
Head of UX Design, Gap Inc.
Measuring the success of these projects is done in a number of ways. KPIs include NPS scores, revenue, qualitative feedback, RPV (revenue per visit), UPT (units per transaction), customers joining the loyalty program, and total number of customers in the database.
We primarily focus on KPIs to measure success. We look at increases in revenue and also look at qualitative feedback. [It’s a mix of] qual and quant.
Nicole Torgersen
UX Creative Director, Gap Inc.
Process
1. Customer insights & data - New projects are often driven by customer insights and data. For example, data about the growth of mobile use recently led them to redesign the checkout flow as optimized for mobile.
We’re looking at the delta between how people finish the process of checkout on mobile vs desktop. We saw a big opportunity on mobile. It’s becoming the biggest percentage of our customers’ attention.
Scott Noblit
Director of Interaction Design, Gap Inc.
2. Early research - Many projects start with early research, which takes on a variety of forms: focus groups, guerrilla research, or just talking to people about their shopping habits.
We’re discovering new use cases through data and qualitative research—for example, a mother in a carpool line who pauses her checkout process until later that night after kids are in bed.
Scott Noblit
Director of Interaction Design, Gap Inc.
3. Early, rapid prototyping - Building prototypes in Sketch and InVision for testing is a core part of the process. Tests are often set up in the “Gapeteria” at lunch to draw people in, where employees talk through a problem in exchange for candy and are shown a prototype. This type of testing accomplishes two things: It can improve the product, and it also socializes the designs to give more people a chance to give feedback.
Gap Inc. is an apparel company at its core, so many of our employees don’t have a familiarity with the work that we’re doing. So we set up lunch time sessions to show our work and get feedback.
Scott Noblit
Director of Interaction Design, Gap Inc.
4. Build & test - Scope is narrowed down to one solution and designed to address all business requirements. Usability testing is performed in a usability lab, on UserTesting.com, with customer panels, and testing in-store with associates and customers.
We might iterate through 3-4 weeks of more lightweight testing, and then take it into the usability lab. That’s for when we feel really good about the design, and really want to smooth out the edges.
Scott Noblit
Director of Interaction Design, Gap Inc.
5. A/B test & launch - After qualitative tests, the designs are tested quantitatively with A/B testing. Once it’s determined that the design is strong enough from both a design and business perspective, the feature or product is launched to the public.
What we’re trying to do is de-risk the business along the way as we refine the design. It’s part of our job to constantly challenge the level of design in terms of the product we’re developing, making sure with every conversation we’re challenging each other to strengthen the design.
Greg Schuler
Head of UX Design, Gap Inc.
Org design
- Design at the top: Product design teams including visual design and interaction design report into directors (Nicole Torgersen and Scott Noblit), who report into Head of UX Design Greg Schuler, who in turn reports up into the SVP of Digital at Gap Inc.
- Core teams: At Gap Inc., design teams are predominantly in a centralized structure, but there are some hybrid situations, where teams break off multidisciplinary space to go deep on a problem, and understand how customers interact with the brand (see Evolutionary vs Revolutionary design above).
Unlike many centralized design teams, the team at Gap Inc. is not treated like a service agency. Rather, their design teams are armed with the business goals of their brand partners, and they collaborate with central functions to establish product strategy.
Specifically, the design teams work closely with their technology partners (who are also centralized) and involve them early in the ideation phase. Together, the design, product and development teams believe shared product development is a strategic advantage for their company.
I was on a Core team this fall in the kids and baby space, where we were trying to look at how the relationship and dynamics with technology has evolved...let’s go out there and understand by talking to parents and children and understand how they go about this process, in their lives and in their homes.
Greg Schuler
Head of UX Design, Gap Inc.
Tool Stack
How Gap Inc. uses InVision
- Showing their work and receiving comments
- Prototyping
- Concept validation
- Socializing design concepts
- Real-time collaboration