Redesigning American Eagle’s Digital Jeans Guide
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Business Context
American Eagle’s merchants planned to introduce new fits, styles and fabrics for the back to school season. They enlisted the UX team’s help to ensure online customers could follow their typical process for assessing fit and feel, but without ever setting foot in a store, feeling confident the jeans they bought would fit just as expected.
Research Questions
Methods
Our research approach progressed from generative in-store ethnography through competitive testing and iterative usability testing.
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We conducted in-store ethnography and shop alongs to see how people assess fit and feel in person, with hopes of replicating some of those behaviors online.
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We conducted usability sessions with American Eagle customers using competitor's apps and websites, hoping to glean what worked and what didn't in their approaches.
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We conducted three rounds of iterative usability testing to validate and hone the concepts we generated based on previous research and design activities.
From the Field
Our in-store research set the stage for the rest of the project. We discovered that most shoppers use a process that moves through a series of behaviors:
Visual Winnowing
Rebuying (if possible)
Assessing Fit Points
Demonstrations of Stretch
Design
The UXR team worked with design to bring these findings into a digital jeans guide experience that emphasized scanning, rebuying, and try-on videos demonstrating common fit points (like hips and rise) and stretchiness. We refined these prototypes using iterative usability testing, and compared the results to competitors’ experiences, to favorable results.
Impact