Hallmark Holiday Cards

Hallmark expanded their photo card assortment, by introducing Holiday Cards. As the Customization Experience Design Lead, I architected the design solution for the end to end shopping and personalization experience.

Defining the user journey

With the launch of this new product, we were also tasked with adding new capabilities to our customization editor. We struggled with managing which product formats leveraged each capability and where each new capability would be introduced to the user experience. So I called a TV timeout on solutioning this product so we could understand our north star. We focused on the long-term vision – where do we want to be this time next year or the year after? We went through many rounds of iteration, creating new governance standards for the editor, and role playing the flows. Once we felt confident about our long-term experience, we moved into the short-term experience. It was easy to remove features that we knew we absolutely could not support in the next 6 months. Then we role played the short-term flow and refined based on what feels best for the consumer, instead of what can our tech teams deliver. By having both the short-term and long-term flows, our technology teams could ensure they were building a scalable architecture and we were able to test out scenarios much faster.

Iteration

Once we had our high level user flow created, we dove into the holiday cards solution. Our existing customization editor supported users who were creating a single card for a single recipient so for holiday cards we planned to scale the same editor to support user purchasing bulk cards. I audited the existing experience and added sticky notes when something should pivot for the holiday cards. Because of the existing editor, I was able to skip over low fidelity designs and iterate in the high fidelity designs.

There were a few changes for holiday cards that we received pushback on from leadership because it “didn’t seem helpful”. However, because we had a long-term journey we were able to show how it might not be helpful upfront, but down the road as we add the future capabilities then it will be helpful. We needed our business partners to start shifting the conversation from “right now” to “where we want to be”.

Product Strategy

As we got closer to the product launch, I started to point out that it wasn’t clear to consumers which products were available for 1-to-1 vs bulk. The experience conveyed it via dropdowns and pricing UI, but as a user scanned the products during discovery the products were photographed and communicated exactly the same. Previous user research told us that consumers rely heavily on product images to convey the key details, such as editing capabilities, delivery options, and quantity. So stepping slightly out of my wheelhouse, I partnered with merchandising and creative on creating a product image strategy strategy for our personalized products. Because of my experience with design systems, I encouraged the team to think about creating image assets as libraries so they could plug and play evergreen imagery based on the different capability offerings.

User Feedback

During the iteration phase, I ran the Figma prototype through usertesting.com to make sure we were meeting consumer needs. However, during alpha and beta testing we started to see a large amount of users selecting blank envelopes. Our teams anticipated users opting to print their address on the envelopes based on previous user research. When we watched the user sessions, we realized that the envelope selection was not as clear as it previously tested. Design and development quickly iterated on an alternate approach, we re-ran the new design through user testing and learned that a traditional form approach performed better than the previous version.

Take a look, maybe even order your own holidays cards on hallmark.com!