DTIG Open Innovation
The Digital Technology & Innovation Group (DTIG)’s mission is to create innovative digital products to support the high-touch needs of The Estée Lauder Companies consumers and transform brand experiences to accelerate e-commerce. Innovation research focus areas are augmented reality, chatbots, image recognition, artificial intelligence, and voice. DTIG collaborates with tech startups to build engaging, tech-enabled experiences across multiple touchpoints. This open innovation page is for tech partners who would like to make an impact on the consumer experience in ELC to submit an overview of their company for consideration to work with DTIG for innovation projects.
The Challenge
This was the first webpage DTIG team was launching, and the team didn’t have branding at the time. The most challenging part of this project was to define the team branding and design a concept that represents tech, innovation, and beauty. The team wanted the page to look unique, techie and fun while also matching The Estée Lauder Companies’ style guidelines.
The problem is the team wants to find a way to promote to vendors without reaching out the strategy team all the time. They can auto-fill information online and the team can review their profile after they submit their profile.
High-Level Goals
Design a web page to introduce DTIG and The Estée Lauder Companies to potential tech partners
Easy to understand and easy to use for our partners
Be creative and innovative
My Responsibilities
I was the only UX/UI designer on this project. I worked with a strategic lead, a producer, a motion designer, and developers, came up with different concepts, and successfully launched the page.
The page was launched in 2019. See the live page here.
Ideation
Get Initial Inspiration
This was the first project I handled when I joined the team. In order to make sure this page represented the team and also get to know the team better, I sent out a survey to ask my colleagues about their thoughts and opinions of the page. I summarized the survey results and got some inspiration.
Ideation
Based on the feedback from team members, I proposed 2 ideas: the first idea is close to ELC style, using beauty images and shapes to deliver the idea, and not too crazy, but also added some interesting elements to make the page look fun. The second direction was more abstract. I came up with 4 concepts. The team really liked concept one from the second direction: shaping the future of beauty.
Concept 1: Beauty Images + Shapes +Swatches
Concept 2: abstract shapes, colors, illustration
Sketch, Illustration, and Design
After understanding what the team was looking for on the page, I started to sketch ideas and used Illustrator to mockup all the sections. In order to show the uniqueness of the page, I thought it would be nice to use some interaction on the page to give our partners a creative and innovative feel. So I partnered with a motion graphic designer and shared my thoughts on the interaction I envisioned on each section for the page. Luckily, he was able to quickly create the interactions (watch the video below).
Part of the section on the page1
Part of the section on the page 2
Part of the section on the page 3
The Final Design
DTIG team really liked the concept and the design with interaction. So we presented it to the senior leadership in our division. The leadership team liked it but also suggested the page be closer to the ELC style. After a few rounds of design updates, we launched the page in 2019.
The final design
The team have received more than 100 submission without any PR through this page in 3 months 2019.