Stanley by Neiman Marcus

Overview Stanley by Neiman Marcus is the app to go to to be inspired, styled and served. Stanley will assist you with making every day more extraordinary. Tap into the lifestyle you want to create with ease and confidence.

Role
UX Designer
Visual Design, Prototyping, Content Mapping, User Journey, Marketing Strategy

Problem
The current Neiman Marcus App was outdated and built by an outside agency, and there was a need to update the app and test a new content model on the platform. The tech stack at the time couldn’t support the needs of our new strategy, and to completely update the current app would be too intensive and costly.

Vision
The goal was to create a new app that could be managed by our CMS, and could be used to test a new content model. The initiative for this app was to create a selling platform where the main focus wasn’t to sell a product or a brand, but to sell a lifestyle. To be able to sell this lifestyle to our users we wanted to focus on three concepts:

STYLE
Personal styling is in your hands.
• View looks styled for you by occasion
• Edit looks with pieces suggested by Stanley
• Save your favorite looks and share them with your style advisor, who can offer expert advice and shopping assistance
• Add a full look to your shopping bag

INSPIRE
Explore, find inspiration, and shop.
• Scroll through a personalized feed of recommendations curated by our experts and discover something new
• Get access to the latest collections and stories to help you build your wardrobe
• See how you might wear a piece that you love and save your favorites
• When you've found a must-have, add it to your shopping bag

SERVE
Exceptional service is a few taps away. Top-notch style advisors are at your service.
• View available services offered at your preferred store, whether you visit in person or virtually
• Book appointments with expert style advisors and specialists
• Send your style advisor a message before your appointment or any time you have a question
• In-app messaging, which you can access via your account, allows you direct contact with your style advisor
• Send real-time messages as questions arise, and your style advisor will get back to you as quickly as possible

Once the pillars were defined the next objective was to work in the content model into the strategy. The new content model we wanted to test was to have personalized content be shown on each new load of the app. We created a content matrix and a tagging system which would pull content from our repository to fill the homescreen of the app based on user shopping habiats.

Process
With a plan laid out my team’s goal was to understand the content startegy and the customer journey. First we built out a feature list for what was needed to support the content needs. After the feature list was created, we mapped out the user journey. We decided to use a loose flow chart since the content was interconnected.

Once the flow chart was created, our next goal was to tackle all the different variables we had for content within the home screen.

We wanted to have auto-generated content based on user different user propensitoes such as brand, category and price point. We then identified three content types we needed to build out based on this with them being:

Editorial card
Multi sku card
Single sku card

Next we needed to map out how the API would pull this data from our repository to build out each component.

I was then tasked with designing the UI for the Inspire Feed, which was to be the home screen; the Style Tool for the style section; and the product description pages.

The Inspire Feed’s goal was to have 3 content types with a minimum of 4 cards and a maximum of 8 cards. The screen would adapt to user behavior and serve up cards based on interactions, so every user could have a unique screen based on their habits.

The Style Tool, which was rebranded as a Looks Card, was based on a product recommendation tool called Stylize that Neiman’s had recently acquired. It was a new way for us to recommend products to a user in a more interactive and holistic view.

The Product Description Page needed to be transformed to not only sell a product, but to also surprise and delight the user with related content for the item.

From here I spent the next two months iterating on these screens using a design system established by our team for the project. The first and largest task was to get the Inspire Feed created with this going through multiple rounds of cross-functional leadership reviews. The other two screens were easier to create because it was picking up design cues from the Inspire Feed, and didn’t need to go through the cross-functional leadership team.

Impact
Stanley by Neiman Marcus was launched in August 2021. It is an invite-only app that was sent to 10% of our customers from our targeted segments. It was not created to takeover the traditional Neiman Marcus shopping app, but to test out the content model and to create an in-house stack. With roughly about 10,000 users at its peak. Users in the app had an increased in-app session with Stanley averaging about 6 minutes over the Neiman Marcus app , and an AOV increase of about 18% over the Neiman Marcus app.

The content model was considered a success and with the API and content matrix in place we are now currently in the process of combining the two experiences into one app.

For confidentiality reasons I have omitted the actual values for these metrics.

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