AS Watson Group — From UX Research to Strategic Redesign
E-Commerce Experience Redesign
E-COMMERCE, MOBILE/WEB, SAAS, DESIGN SYSTEMS, MULTI-MARKET UX, AI INTEGRATION, USABILITY TESTING, VOICE OF CUSTOMER, DEEP-DIVE, COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
My Role
Product Designer (UX Research Synthesis, Strategy & UI/UX)
Methodology
High-Level Impact
Competitive audit and user testing backed by 2,144 global customers.
📁 Background
Timeline
2024 to 2025 - 1 year
Scope
E-commerce App & Web
AS Watson’s mobile commerce experience served customers across several Asian markets, but individual features had evolved at different speeds. The result was an inconsistent journey across product discovery, checkout, loyalty benefits, and promotional content.
The redesign was informed by the Watsons Digital Assessment — APP EU–Asia 2024, which evaluated mobile-app maturity and customer-experience gaps across the end-to-end journey. Rather than redesigning the entire ecosystem, I translated the most relevant research signals into four focused interventions with a direct connection to customer behaviour and commercial outcomes.
+15% Add-to-Cart (ATC) velocity | -8% checkout leakage
A.S. Watson was underperforming digitally compared to market leaders (Digital Maturity Score of 76/100 vs. Shopee's 83/100). The goal was to transform this gap into a conversion engine by optimizing the entire retail pipeline
Background
Analysis & Insights
Transforming raw qualitative data and survey metrics into actionable design decisions.
📐 The Strategy: Diagnosing Gaps Across the Triad
1. The Consumer App
Extreme "scroll fatigue" due to SKU fragmentation (variants scattered as separate cards), a cluttered homepage layout, and high checkout abandonment.
Through competitive auditing and user interviews, we identified three core bottlenecks:
2. The Internal CMS
Global campaign launches were bottlenecked by manual marketing asset translation, tagging, and cropping.
3. The B2B Seller CRM
External sellers lacked self-service product catalog management tools, slowing down inventory velocity.
Watsons App UX Review
Optimizing information architecture and checkout flows through data-driven user insights.
Scope & Alignment
Defining the target user spectrum and setting strategic research benchmarks.
Methodology & Framework
User interview, cart sorting and user testing.
Discovery
Variant items scattered in PLP, High checkout friction, Overcrowded homepage feed, Hard-sell campaign content.
Data-driven Enhancement
Ensured a consistent visual language and accessibility standards across Asia and Europe.
UX Research
Conducted in-depth user research and translated insights into prioritized UI enhancements.
CRM Platform
Streamlined communication and task management for sellers and selling platforms (Watsons, ParknShop, Fortress).
CMS SaaS
Supported AI-integrated CMS features, including bulk editing and translation tools.
🔀 The Pivot: Balancing Speed with Scalability
🪃 The Curveball
Mid-project, market-ready generative AI APIs emerged, threatening to make our in-house custom build obsolete and blow our engineering budget.
To streamline our app's product display, we originally scoped a custom internal AI tagging engine within our CMS.
🧠 The Decision
I led a rapid shift to third-party API integration, cutting non-value-added development.
💎 The Value
This pivot saved 2 weeks of development and allowed me to reallocate resources to build a tokenized global design system in Figma, establishing UI consistency across the App, CMS, and CRM platforms.
💡 The Solution: A High-Conversion Connected Loop
We executed a 3-step cohesive design rollout:
Step 1: B2C Mobile App Redesign (Conversion Focus)
Designed a streamlined DAM system featuring automated tagging, quick video translation, and template-based bulk editing using our integrated APIs.
Step 2: AI-Enhanced CMS Portal (Operations Focus)
Adaptive Homepage: Replaced static promotional banners with a personalized, behavior-driven feed.
PLP Variant Swatches: Consolidated duplicate SKU listings into unified cards with inline color/size selectors.
Streamlined 2-Step Checkout: Standardized cart hierarchy and grouped payment/delivery inputs into intuitive accordions.
Step 3: B2B Seller CRM Portal (Vendor Focus)
Built a self-service portal empowering external merchants to manage inventory and sales data directly, reducing support overhead.
🚀 Measurable Value Delivered
The strategic redesign systematically upgraded A.S. Watson’s core retail pillars:
📈 +15% Add-to-Cart Velocity: Driven by the instant feedback of the dynamic PLP Variant Swatches.
🛒 -8% Checkout Leakage: Achieved by reducing checkout cognitive load and streamlining inputs.
⏱️ 2 Weeks Saved & Under Budget: Gained through the strategic API pivot in the CMS project workflow
👥 100% Internal Adoption: Full migration of global content teams to the updated, AI-assisted DAM portal.
