This project was a pivotal intervention for Soho House, the esteemed private members club. Facing a critical juncture due to internal management challenges, an ill-fated decision led to the premature rollout of an untested navigation system. The repercussions were dire, as reflected in the concerning statistics below…
Our mission? To execute a swift rollback of the faulty navigation while simultaneously enhancing the Information Architecture (IA) of key pages. Moreover, we embarked on a comprehensive overhaul, refining organizational structures and integrating new functionalities into the design system governing both the website and the app.
role
Product Design
Prototyping
Interaction Design
Experience Design
projects
Defining IA + navigation
Guest invite app clip implementation
Payments via app
Design system improvements
atomic screens
01
Quests
Altering the navigation impacts the entirety of the design system on a global scale.
Convincing stakeholders of our preferred approach and seamlessly integrating user testing into workflows while sourcing suitable participants.
Enhancing feature flag functionality concurrently with larger-scale changes.
Design system selection
02
Figures & Research
Using the App Store reviews there were several complaints that the navigation was impossible to use. Frequently getting lost and unable to locate pages.
We recruited several members who have used previous iterations of the app to see how they navigate to high traffic areas. Which corroborated with the App Store reviews.
Previous navigation
The previous version of the navigation was contained within a floating action button, as this was an unusual pattern it added to the cognitive load to users discovering the navigation, and the open navigation itself (3rd along) had so many items to look through. We also found the button to overlay on secondary level page primary actions.
refactoring the ia
Through several workshops using card sorting exercises we broke out the high traffic top level pages into several iterations. These options were then put back through to the workshop participants and progressed with UI.
03
Solutions
Along with implementing the navigation we looked at changing the content strategy of the homepage, it currently served as a long sprawling feed of news articles that didn’t provide value and high traffic information was hidden on secondary level pages.
Homepage
The restructured homepage has a personalised header showing an image of the members favourite house. We then segmented areas of personalised inspiration focusing on booking and connecting with other members.
Guest invite
As there are 36k guests invited every week with the emphasis to making all members invite through the app, we wanted to make this a primary interaction without moving away from the home.
Events
One of the main drivers of the app is the bookable events happening in the houses everyday. We improved the designs of the pages by associating house logos with the house name, the status of the event and what type of event.
House Pay
As there are multiple bars/restaurants throughout the premises, the house pay system allows the member to pay all their bills within the app.
04
Outcomes
We produced an MVP of the new navigation keeping the structure of the homepage, with a release plan of the rollouts for engineering to manage.
The App Store ranking since the launch of refactored nav increased from 2.3* to 4.8*.