Drest

Immersive brand partnerships

2023 ✦ Head of UX

What’s the problem?

Can you deliver high-quality branded fashion partnerships in an interactive mobile platform?

TL;DR

I developed a sophisticated live event structure tied to the cadence of IRL fashion week, aligned with the needs of our Partnerships, Analytics and Game Design teams.

Context and stakes

Previous partnership with Cartier

Drest had been working with luxury fashion brands since its inception to create tie-in activations with luxury brands. These were simple as player experiences.

I was tasked with creating a fuller-immersion version of the product, following on from Farfetch integration- a natural and meaningful way to interact with luxury brands.

Could this be meaningful while caring about the player experience?

Methods

To make a best in class cross-industry product experience like this, we’d need enthusiastic engagement from our fashion buyers, writers, producers as well as game and product designers.

I designed and ran a program of ideation and discovery sessions, including people all across the business (and our lead investor!)

Including non-design disciplines early in product ideation has the best chance of them being engaged in the longer product development process.

As important was mapping the different dependancies within and external to the business based on our existing brand relations and product development pipeline, to avoid known pitfalls (risk mitigation)

Pitching to internal and external stakeholders

I pitched a live event system based on the cadence of fashion week, drawing from real life paradigms to create a compelling experience for our players.

I focused on the fantasy of fashion - the idea that the world of shows, parties, invites and closets was akin to an unattainable fantasy for our player base.

Fashion partnerships pitched this feature as a core part of the new product we were building, to several brand partners.

Though I left the business in 2023, the feature launched in the subsequent year, retaining the concept and direction I developed.

My learnings

Branded challenges (MVP of full design shipped during my tenure) increased mid term retention (D3-D7) by ~1.5-2.4%
Did not solve D14 retention onwards.
Wildly popular with brand partnerships team, but a challenge for product design.
Luxury aesthetics are not built with accessibility in mind, so education is key.