Search by camera
This was an experimental project into using new technology from google to enhance the way users found products.
My role: Lead UX.UI · Android
Problem space
The R&D team had been working on a technology solution that used googles visual search capabilities and were looking to include it in one of YOOX Net-A-Porter's apps. This was an experimental project to see what the appetite of users would be for this kind of functionality. It was decided we would launch it in a small market on The Outnet to test.
FocusHow does google’s technology work
At what stage do they tend to call
How can we use it enhance the discovery process
How can we educate users about this feature
Research & insights
On this project I conducted a competitive audit to understand how the same or similar technology was being used to enhance the discovery process. In addition I worked closely with engineering teams to get a deeper understanding into the technologies capabilities
Competitive audit
From the competitive audit I found that how results were returned on the screen made a huge impact into how useful this technology was, messy results meant it was difficult to find what a user was searching for and provided no extra value over a typical keyboard search journey.
Hints on how to use the feature was key in ensuring users got the best results.
Text based tags over results obscured what you were looking at and it wasn’t clear where the match was.
How the technology worked
Working with engineering teams I found we had the ability to tweak how sensitive the algorithm was when it came to analysing the picture taken, this would be useful to help control the output of information
Design decisions
Onboarding journey
I created an onboarding journey that helped educate users on the feature, the main focus was on how best to take a photo. The reason behind this was the better the input, the better the output, this would result in better search results and making it easier for the user to find new items of clothing
Presenting results
To help the user identify what that technology had identified I implemented dots on the results, this made it clear without covering the image what the technology was able to pick up.
Each dot represented a category such as bag, top, bottom etc. By breaking up the results into categories it meant the user didn’t have to scroll through a large mixed list, instead it was a curated set of results
Working with engineering
On this project I worked closely with engineering teams throughout so I had a deeper understanding of how the backend technology worked before coming with design solutions.
The constant communication also meant I was able to provide short informal demos to receive feedback from the team and it also gave the chance for engineering teams to have an input.
Outcome
This project was a success and added an enhanced way for users to search for new items of clothing
+13%
Increase in product views compared to keyboard search
+10%
Conversion rate