This is the story of how over a year and half I helped kick start the journey of customer centric change at Clarks. As Head of UX I formed a new capability to improve the customer experience and disrupt, challenge and improve the ways of working.
Client
Clarks
Duration
1.5 year (Fixed term)
My role
Head Of User Experience (Global)
Activities
Design Leadership, Line Management, Disrupting, User Research, User Testing, Presentations
Created clear process and approach for UX team when working in AGILE projects
Grew, mentored and developed the UX team from 6-12+ (Supported with additional UX Manager)
During my time at Clarks there were measurable sales increases
When I moved out of London to Somerset, I never expected a few months later to be working for one of the worlds most recognised shoe brands. During the year and half I was there, 3 CEOs transitioned in and out of Clarks. This had a major impact to the kind of work I was trying to do – Influence and create a more user centric culture. Like John Lewis Clarks’s is a ‘nation favourite’ that became synonymous with quaility, trust and a good in-store experience. However over time the things that had made Clarks great had become eroded, the teams battered and fatigued from a revolving door of leadership without strategy. The digital team in particular was in need of change and a way to connect their work more closely to the customer.
When I begun working with Clarks there wasn’t any UX practice. I set about building a sustainable UX capability that could provide insights, guidance, designs, regular customer tests and create business change.
All of this resulted in a team that could provide the business with insights and design thinking behaviours to iterate customer experience
Wall working space and collaborative practices
Design workshops
When trying to solve problems, Clarks relied on old change and delivery methods via project managers, water fall projects, fixed timelines, requirements and briefs. This often resulted in a poor customer experience that needed re-work, was delivered late and over budgets.
Communicating iterative design processes
Score cards for ideation in design workshops
Empathy maps for design workshops
Senior senior stakeholders were struggling to understand why the website sales were under-performing. This was due to clarks having no qualitative insights capability or cadence for customer feedback.
Guerrilla in-store user testing
Journey maps that show the end to end customer experience
Co-created a set of customer goals to help focus business teams
In a period over 6 months my team made significant design improvements to clarks.com. This was a major win given the challenging dev and organisational environment.
Guerrilla in-store user testing
Journey maps that show the end to end customer experience
Mobile design improvements
The brand team was producing media assets for all channels. They lacked digital expertise and understanding in producing content for the web, that was both accessible and easy to develop, This was causing frustration, tension and time consuming re-work for the online merchandising teams. It also created a challenge when developing new functionality to keep it consistent with design of site.
My team and I…
Guerrilla in-store user testing
Journey maps that show the end to end customer experience
A key part of creating change and collaborative culture was to reimagine the working space. The Clarks digital space looked the same as the accounts department, with rows of large fixed desks and little breakout space.
“Danny is a joy to work with – he is a highly skilled UX professional who is passionate about bringing the best of that discipline to drive consumer-centric transformation – he is tenacious, compassionate and has a relentless drive to make things happen. If you need someone to help you lead your teams to a brighter future – Danny would be a great asset.”
– Lucy Knight, Clarks Digital Director
My time in one of the most iconic and legacy high street brands around was intense, rewarding painful and very tough. Trying to create change within an organisation that was exhuasted from change (of the bad kind) was at that time in free-fall (3 CEOs within one year). The froth created from this turmoil created exceptionally challenging environment to influence. On reflection I probably tried to ‘fix’ too many things at once, which became a little disorientating. My main role was to play the disrupter which while effective wasn’t always the right role to play, given the sensitives people were feeling with so much uncertainty. Towards the end of the engagement as job losses in the teams looked imminent my role shifted to providing human support and preparing the for uncertainty.
While there were some significant accomplishments, the aspect I was most proud was the impact on my immediate team. Watching them grow and develop their confidence as soon as they were given the opportunity was the most rewarding aspect of this work.
My final leaving note from the team which warms my heart to read.