UX research

Context: Existing Honey App

The existing Honey app was suffering from low engagement, likely due to being a noisy shopping surface without a unique value proposition over the desktop extension. The app was originally designed to let shoppers buy from multiple merchants at the same time, in hopes of being the next Amazon marketplace (via cart aggregation).

A few months after launching in 2019, product leadership realized this strategy was too expensive and removed that feature from the app, opting to use an in-app browser (IAB) to apply coupons and make purchases.
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The pivot left the product feeling directionless, so my PM and I worked on reshaping the app to be something integral to people's lives (the goal being WAU then DAU).

App Store screenshots for the original Honey app

Research & Strategy

My PM and I led an extensive research sprint with two other designers, focused on finding radically consumable and essential experiences. After independent research gathering and a group download, we extracted standout elements of onboarding (Breath of the Wild), preference gathering (Hinge), and consumability (Tiktok, Stories, Robinhood Updates).

Our research download for notable onboarding experiences, with sticker-vote downselection. The "Marry Me" theme grouped quiz experiences together.

The "Choose your adventure" theme was centered around delightful progressive disclosure, e.g. Breath of the Wild tutorial area.

Last, but not least, we have the apps that have certain things that won't work with our app.

This is a synthesis of patterns and principles we used to guide and align our work moving forward.

Our approach was to craft a delightful preference gathering onboarding experience that fed into a personalized hub with a clear content consumption pathway: urgent, ephemeral shopping updates first, followed by activity-based content (recently viewed), and ending on recommendations and discovery.

With a preference gathering FTUX and clear exhaustion pathway, we had a flywheel that sustains user engagement over time via better and better personalized updates and recommendations.

Product flywheel we used to get stakeholder buy-in for the new direction of the app

To execute on the vision, the incredibly talented, OG Honey designer Anita Wei tackled onboarding, and I took the homepage experience that followed.

Flow and Wireframes

While Anita worked on onboarding, I worked on the mechanics of the homepage. Zooming into the steady state components of the flywheel (daily user journeys), I crafted two main flows to help inform the next step: UI construction.

Two main user journeys and the mechanics of populating the homepage with urgent, ephemeral, and relevant shopping updates

Using these flows, the patterns and principles we synthesized, and information architecture work we did during the research phase, I landed on a homepage structure that could be visually compelling with a clear exhaustion pathway.

IA components and the winning wireframe structure

Building out the rest of the flow in wires, the vision was slowly coming to life.

Complete wireframe flow of the exhaustion pathway: Consume the visually rich Honey stories, swipe through the shopping updates card stack, flip through the stories of the merchants you follow, and then review your recently viewed items and pick up where you left off. If nothing is pressing and you've exhausted all the urgent, ephemeral content, switch to explore mode for shopping inspiration.

Production Design & MVP

With the product strategy and UX down, it was time to implement the designs in high fidelity. Anita nailed the onboarding experience with big, simple type, well-executed creature comforts (like the progress bar and selection boxes), and minimal but punchy illustrations (thank you, Visual Arts team!) and tasteful color blocking.

Final preference gathering onboarding done by the amazing Anita Wei

For the homepage, wanted to update the look and feel of our app to the iOS standards at the time. I used large, left-aligned section headers and went with larger corner radii (with iOS curvature continuity) for the containers.

I introduced a few new patterns to our design language as well, like the swipeable shopping updates card stack, savings stats pills, new store list, and updated product tiles.

Final UI for the new homepage that leverages the work done in onboarding

Prototype for devs on the card stack interaction (the team had never built this before for Honey)

Outcomes & Conclusion

Shortly after the MVP designs were approved, product leadership had to make the difficult choice to put the Shopping Hub plans on hold and focus on rolling out the new PayPal + Honey cash back program. Onboarding and a barebones version of the homepage are built and live in prod currently with more updates to come.

This project had a huge scope, but the team and I were able to live inside the chaos and thrive. I really felt like we were executing well on product thinking, UX, and UI all at the same time. I'm proud of the work we did, the united front we used to get stakeholder buy-in, and the fond memories we made working late nights to get this shipped.