🤵🏽 Turning first-time grooms into confident shoppers
Timeline —
10 months
Role —
Product Designer @ Bain
For —
The Men’s Warehouse
In action ✨
OVERVIEW
The Men's Warehouse wanted to reinvent its omnichannel experience for grooms. How might we turn an unfamiliar, high-stakes purchase into something approachable, and even enjoyable?
MY ROLE
Reimagined the end-to-end digital wedding experience and brought a future vision to life by designing and launching an MVP product — “Wedding Wingman”
🚀 Results and impact
50
NPS score from MVP testing, indicating strong customer satisfaction with Wedding Wingman
~80%
of users completed the full planning steps on average, validating the flow’s clarity and usefulness
~38%
online-to-in-store conversion rate for wedding customers, demonstrating that the MVP effectively guided wedding customers from digital planning to in-store action
Words from the CEO at The Men’s Warehouse
“ The UX on this tool is phenomenal. And great that this is testing well with customers. It seems so intuitive. It’s a beautiful thing - brides have their checklist and know what comes with wedding planning, now Grooms will have a much better experience. ”
01. Understanding the Groom
The first thing the design team did was conduct thorough research in the beginning weeks to lay the groundwork, and really understand the Grooms and their journey. This included; 2 surveys (with a reach of ~1.2k and ~6.8k users), 18 groom & spouse interviews, 5 weblogs, and 14 mystery shopping exercises
Crafting the persona — Meet Stylish Steve
Our research allowed us to develop a deeper understanding of the Groom and what matters to them when making in their suit selection process
02. Co-creating and ideating with client
With the artifacts taped to the wall as guidelines, we asked participants to step into Steve’s shoes and ideate on his future state digital experience. We gave participants sticky notes and asked them about:
what was missing?
what was surprising?
what was most important to Steve?
Letting grooms choose what to build
Eight grooms reviewed five concepts. The Build Your Look quiz ranked in the top two for most participants
03. Designing a guided path to the perfect look
The Build Your Look quiz guides grooms one decision at a time, so they can discover, save, and compare options without feeling overwhelmed. Each answer builds a profile and a closet that store associates can access, connecting the online and in-store experience.
04. Validating with real grooms
🤵♂️ USER TESTING
Finding the gaps
Eight grooms shopping for wedding outfits tested the high-fidelity design to surface points of confusion and gaps.
🧪 USABILITY TESTING
Proving it works
Seven participants gave an average usability score of 87.1, rated excellent.
05. Key design challenges & solutions
🚨 DESIGN CHALLENGE 1
Lack of Knowledge
Grooms didn't know the difference between suit types and styles, which made every choice feel high stakes. Many grooms are buying a suit for the first time and are clueless when it comes to the different types and styles.
💡 SOLUTION
Rich Educational Content
Educational content at each step teaches suit basics in context, so grooms build confidence as they go.
🚨 DESIGN CHALLENGE 2
Lack of Control
Grooms felt locked into preset options and couldn't make the look their own.
💡 SOLUTION
Straightforward Customization
A Make It Your Own feature offers full customization, down to accessory colors, with real-time visualization of every change.
05. Building an identity
The quiz got its own identity and logo, designed to feel distinct while staying consistent with The Men's Warehouse brand.
Going beyond the suit
Interviews showed grooms needed help with more than the outfit, so we designed a central wedding dashboard to keep planning in one place.
