Year of the Wedding

Re-imagining the Wedding Customer Journey from Design to Build

And So It Begins…

After the COVID pandemic, there was a surge in weddings as couples who had postponed their ceremonies began rescheduling. With a growing demand for wedding attire and a need for streamlined planning, "Wedding Wingman" was designed to offer a personalized, stress-free shopping experience.

Project type

Omni-channel Retail

Project Status

🚀 Succesful MVP launch

Impact

• Launched a new product from scratch which led to a nationwide rollout

• Improved decision-making through data-driven insights

• Streamlined operations

Timeline

6 months

Team

Executive Team

UX Manager

  • 2 Senior Designers, 2 Junior Designers

2 Engineers

3 Business Consultants

Key Pain Point

Grooms face uncertainty when choosing between renting or buying a suit, with over 60% undecided upon arrival. They seek a stress-free and effortless experience, with nearly 50% prioritizing ease and 70% valuing scheduled appointments and dedicated attention.

How might we create a seamless and supportive shopping journey that simplifies decision-making and reduces stress?

Where we started

Our heuristic analysis evaluated key steps in the user journey, including Product Discovery, Rental Steps, Account/Event Creation, Fit Quiz and Wedding Party Tracking. We identified usability challenges and opportunities to enhance clarity and engagement. Product discovery revealed issues with navigation, transparency, onboarding and overall guidance.

Moderated interviews

We recruited 7 participants for 45 minute sessions. Each interview had 1 facilitator and 1 person capturing notes in Miro. As a team, we performed the following:

  1. Clustering and Themes: The stickies were organized into clusters based on common themes to identify key trends and pain points.

  2. Prioritization: We prioritized insights by their importance, frequency, or relevance to the project goals.

  3. Synthesis: Key findings are summarized to distill actionable insights, such as user needs, frustrations, and opportunities for improvement.

Using Survey Data to Map the Formalwear Journey

To better understand the customer journey for men’s formalwear rentals and purchases, we conducted in-depth surveys to capture key decision-making moments, pain points, and preferences. These insights informed strategic improvements across digital and in-store touch-points, ensuring a more seamless and personalized experience for our customers.

Core Customer

Stylish Steve is a trend-conscious professional who values convenience and elegance. As someone who attends multiple formal events each year and has an upcoming wedding of his own, he seeks modern, high-quality formalwear that reflects his polished style without the commitment of ownership.

Steve appreciates streamlined processes, personalized service, and the ability to look sharp with minimal effort.

Customer Journey

To better understand Stylish Steve’s experience, we mapped his customer journey across key touchpoints, tracking emotions, unmet needs, and survey data.

By analyzing how he feels at each stage— from browsing to purchase to post-wear—we uncovered friction points and opportunities for a more seamless, satisfying experience. These insights guided strategic improvements, ensuring a journey that’s as stylish as Steve himself.

Opportunity Areas

Heading into our hybrid workshop we defined 5 Opportunity Areas identified during research to enhance the user experience and meet business goals.

  • Boost Inspiration

  • Make it Easy

  • Instill Confidence

  • Make it Fit, Stylishly

  • Offer Personalization

Deeper Dive into Opportunity Areas

To uncover new possibilities and boost creativity, each opportunity area, had an inspiration gallery of best-in-class examples across industries. By analyzing innovative solutions, emerging trends, and user expectations, we identified insights that could elevate our product experience. This visual approach helped align stakeholders, spark creative problem-solving, and shape a more user-centric strategy.

Aligning for Success

Bringing together key stakeholders in a hybrid workshop, introducing the voice of the customer, design principles, customer journey, and opportunities, we fostered collaboration across teams, blending in-person energy with remote accessibility.

Through interactive exercises, real-time feedback, and strategic discussions, we achieved better alignment on goals, challenges, and next steps. This session not only clarified priorities, but also paved a clear path forward, ensuring a more focused and efficient approach to the project.

Driving towards MVP through another round of user interviews

Leveraging the insights from the first round of user interviews, we put together five concepts with several features which would enable a more frictionless experience for users. Participants were asked to stack rank each concept and then stack rank the features within them.

By the end of the round, 5 out of 7 respondents rated the Build Your Look Wizard, Wedding Dashboard and Wedding Wingman Assistant as the concepts that would add the most value to customers.

Happy Path User Flow

In order to foster collaboration and efficiency, reduce miscommunication and prevent rework, I put together a happy path user flow to create a shared language between product & engineering teams. By aligning on this diagram early in the process, we were able to align on a clear vision, streamline execution, and deliver experiences that truly resonate with users.

Bringing Ideas to Life

Our MVP prototype brought this concept to life, enabling stakeholders to visualize the experience and validate core functionality before development. Through rapid iteration and user feedback, we crafted a seamless, intuitive flow that empowered grooms to manage their wedding party with ease.

This prototype became more than just a design artifact—it served as a blueprint for engineering, guiding the team in prioritizing features, defining technical requirements, and shaping the product roadmap. By aligning business goals with user needs, we ensured a strategic and user-centered development process.

Demo Video

This video was the inspiration demo that we leveraged to paint the picture for the future state vision for Wedding Wingman for an all hands meeting. I was the Creative Director for the video which included UI visuals, voiceover script, music and storyboard.

Where we landed

In 6 months we went from discovery, product definition, and ultimately an MVP launch in test markets.

The MVP launch was successful, achieving key metrics for user acquisition and engagement which would eventually become rolled out across the country. The cross-functional collaboration ensured that all departments contributed valuable insights that shaped the product and its user experience. The project provided valuable insights into the wedding planning space, allowing the team to quickly pivot and refine features on the roadmap based on user feedback.

This MVP laid the foundation for future iterations and set the stage for scaling Wedding Wingman into a fully-featured product that continues to grow in both user base and functionality.

“Shoutout to Joe Taft for quickly taking the reins as the ultimate design lead. You helped shepherd an ever-changing design team that grew and painted the vision for a truly holistic future state experience. Moving from stickies to a clickable prototype backed by research in less than a month! Your grace as the client barraged our Figma with countless comments was impressive!”

— Expert Partner