Crossing the Design Limits, 2023 Coupang Design CONNECT
Coupang's design approach is different from other companies. All decisions are based on data, and design is not limited to the screen.
Reflecting this culture, the 2023 Coupang Design CONNECT showcased cases of design that push the boundaries. Coupang Design CONNECT is a networking event to share knowledge with designers in the industry. Here are some of the cases that were presented at the event that solved problems by pushing the boundaries of design.
1. Beyond the world of design: Coupang's design with data
Hyunsoo Kim (Hyun), UX Director, Merchant Solutions Team, Coupang Eats
There is a saying that 'hunger is the best side dish'. It means that the food you eat when you're hungry is the most delicious. Coupang Eats delivers the most delicious food at the most delicious moment. For Coupang Eats, reliable delivery is essential for customer satisfaction.
However, delivery times are sometimes unexpected. Whether it's a Friday night with a soccer game or a freezing rainy day, there are many factors that can affect delivery times, including busy stores and delivery conditions.
At Coupang Eats, our product designers set out to improve the accuracy of delivery time estimates. They didn't limit themselves to the design, but considered all solutions that pushed the boundaries.
At Coupang, we have a culture that believes in finding fundamental solutions instead of compromises, and in exceeding customer expectations by 100x or more. The goal of improving delivery time accuracy is an example of this culture. There was no "good enough" for customer delight.
The reason for the discrepancy between the estimated delivery time and the actual delivery time was in the cooking time input: the estimated cooking time was different from the actual time taken.
If the actual cooking time was longer than expected, the food would arrive later than the expected delivery time and the delivery partner would not be able to fulfill other orders. Conversely, if the actual cooking time was shorter than expected, the food would be waiting for a long time to be picked up and the food would not taste as good to the customer.
In particular, many store owners enter an estimated cooking time that is longer than the actual time, because it is impossible to enter an estimated cooking time with high accuracy in a busy store, considering all the different factors such as the menu and quantity of the order, the kitchen's cooking conditions, and the time of day/day of the week.
So, Coupang Eats' product designers, data scientists, and POs worked together to create a machine learning model to help shop owners. The goal was to use machine learning to provide accurate cooking time recommendations.
Before building the model, the Coupang Eats team prepared thoroughly: they articulated why they needed the model and hypothesized what data they would collect, evaluate, and utilize through data design.
After the preparation phase, they designed the machine learning model. Within the prototype environment, the machine learning model was evaluated and refined several times to perfect the model.
Then, they went through the service design phase, where they collaborated with the development team to turn the model into an actual service, piloted it to some store owners to see the results in the real world, and analyzed the feedback.
Orders with an estimated cook time and actual cook time difference of 5 minutes up to 20 minutes have decreased significantly since the introduction of the recommended cook time model.
Since introducing the recommended cook time model, the accuracy of the estimated cook time has improved: the graph of the difference between the estimated cook time and the actual cook time has converged around the median of 0. In particular, orders with a difference of 7-10 minutes have significantly decreased to less than 7 minutes, meaning customers are getting their food faster.
A difference of 10 minutes in estimated cooking time versus a difference of 7 minutes or less. You might think that 3 minutes is a small difference. But it only takes a moment for hot food to go cold.
Coupang Eats' designers are making sure that customers get the most delicious food at the most delicious moment. And as this story shows, designers' work for a better customer experience isn't limited to design.
The Role of RDS (Rocket Design System)
Coupang has the Rocket Design System (RDS). A design system is a solution that includes UI kits, design guidelines, and more. The RDS team creates standards based on Coupang’s design principles and helps product designers adhere to them.
At Coupang, we believe in doing more with less. We're not just looking to cut costs, we're looking to radically reduce costs.
Ok Yeonjeong, a User Experience (UX) Manager on the RDS team, shared how they are creating a design system that helps them reduce costs fundamentally.
Ok Yeonjeong(Jade), User Experience (UX) Manager on the RDS team
At Coupang, testing quickly and delivering improvements to customers is something we pride ourselves on. However, this culture has come a long way, and there are still some parts of the app that don't reflect Coupang's design standards.
The product widget is one such example. Product widgets are mini applications that allow you to access a product's detail page directly from the current screen. There are over 100 different types of product widgets on Coupang. They have different font sizes, spacing, and exposure information.
This fragmented design means that it takes a long time to change even the smallest element, and because product widgets expose a lot of information, customers spend a long time reading them.
To solve this fragmentation problem, the RDS team organized the design and development code to meet Coupang's standards and created the RDS Product Widget, which was then applied to over 100 different product widgets.
First, the RDS team communicated internally and externally to recognize the problem, set a strategy and roadmap, and then aligned the design and development code structure. They designed the RDS product widget to be scalable to handle a lot of testing and organized the design and development code so that it was not a one-and-done product. On the development side, they set up a framework to allow for flexible control of the widget.
After A/B testing, the RDS product widget was finalized and launched.
As a result, Coupang were able to achieve business goals while providing consistent and convenient usability for customers. This was possible because we were able to showcase A/B-tested functionality.
And across the company, it saved 83% in development time. Before RDS, if you needed to make a change, you would have to change 100 product widgets, but now you only need to change one RDS. RDS has also increased our development productivity.
In this way, our design system helps our coworkers by reducing fundamental costs, which in turn creates a better shopping experience for our customers. At Coupang, design plays a key role in solving problems.
3. Beyond the Boundaries of Work: Designers Who Don't Just Design
Product Designers Yoo Ramsun (Grey) and Lee Gahee (Anna) from the Shopping UX team
The designers at Coupang think big and think deep to solve problems. This value of "breadth and depth" extends beyond problem identification to the entire design process. Our designers dig deep to understand and solve problems, and then apply their solutions to the entire service.
In the 'Designers Who Don't Just Design' session, Coupang's designers showed how they go beyond the boundaries of design to design the entire customer experience.
Coupang's designers improve the experience across services through 'UX Evangelism'. UX Evangelism is the practice of spreading the values and techniques of UX within and outside the team so that more customers can have a better experience.
Discount coupons on the Coupang app are another example of a significant improvement made through Deep Dive and UX Evangelism.
Coupang now shows coupons right on the product detail page so that customers can intuitively see if a discount is available. However, before the redesign, many shoppers didn't see the coupons.
The shopping UX team thought the problem was that it was hard to recognize the difference between the different discount phrases, such as "Coupang sale price" and "instant discount," but when they dug deeper with customer interviews and usability tests, they realized the real problem. It wasn't that the discount language wasn't clear, it was that customers were having trouble recognizing whether they were getting a discount or not.
So the Shopping UX team added coupon metaphors near the price to make it easier for customers to recognize discounts. They also worked on improving coupon metaphors.
Before and after coupon metaphor improvement. Before the improvement, the coupon shape was inconsistent, and the color was a mix of blue and red. After the improvement, the coupon shape is consistent with a right-punched shape and the colors are organized around red, making it easier for customers to recognize the coupon.
*Metaphor: When designing an unfamiliar object, borrowing elements from other familiar objects to represent it.
After the improvement, sales of products with coupons increased - without adding any new information, just by unifying the metaphor, which made it easier for customers to recognize the coupons.
When the Shopping UX team saw the results, they thought, "What if we rolled this out across the entire company to have an even bigger impact?
So they worked with the RDS team to create coupon metaphor guidelines so that people could utilize the new coupon metaphor across the service. They also added coupon notation conventions and examples to the communication guide so that prices and all kinds of discounts were presented in a consistent way.
It wasn't just about sharing the results of the experiment, it was about actively growing together.
As a result, coupons were displayed consistently across screens in the Coupang app and in marketing banners. Customers were more aware of the discounts they could save.
In addition, the insights gained from the improvements were shared with other teams, reducing duplication of similar experiments.
As you can see, UX evangelism is an important part of the Coupang Shopping UX team's culture because spreading the UX vision inside and outside the team enables customer experience improvements on a larger scale. This is in line with our leadership principle "Company-wide perspective".
At Coupang, it's important to consider how your work impacts other organizations and other people's work. We have a culture of seeing the whole picture and considering the impact of one's work on other organizations.
Coupang's designers enjoying the 2023 Coupang Design CONNECT
Designers at Coupang are changing the customers lives exponentially better. If you're up for the new challenge, it is time for you to join Coupang. You can innovate tens of millions of customers lives
2023 Coupang Design CONNECT Part 1
This article is from the Coupang Newsroom and to read more please visit here.
In the community |
The theme of ‘2023 Coupang Design CONNECT’ was also pointedly ‘design that crosses the line’. 2023 Coupang Design CONNECT, held for the second year in a row, is a networking event of knowledge sharing with UX designers.
In the community |
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