LEGO® Group China
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Role: Senior Digital Product Designer (Lead UI, Co-Lead UX)
Designed 100% of UI for mini-program serving 5.3 million members
Led the design evolution across 3 major versions
Design system adopted across 4 major platforms (WeChat, WeCom, Tmall, Douyin)
In the China market, WeChat is king. As such, all retail brands prioritize their presence on WeChat Mini-programs rather than traditional web portals. As WeChat is the primary application used by the whole population, the everything-app serves as LEGO’s main battleground for reaching the Chinese consumers.
My work specialized in adapting global brand principles to this localized digital ecosystem via the overall strategy for LEGO China:
Background
Awareness - Through WeChat moments/ stories/ social to engage targeted demographic
Interest - Convert into LEGO member via WeChat App. Create interest with product catalog and offline store activities
Purchase - Convert into purchase member via online WeCom portal, or direct to offline stores, where additional in-store experiences can be enjoyed to potentially drive more sales
Loyalty - High retention member rewards and engaging tactics to keep members and drive more sales
From: A content-heavy portal (V2) aiming for engagement via quantity.
To: A segmented, data-driven commerce tool (V3) aiming for conversion via personalization.
Homepage v.3
Homepage v3
v.3 (Maturity & Conversion):
-Focus: Integrated WeCom sales, targeted user segmentation while maintaining a clean user experience.
-Key Designs: Streamlined, personalized homepage with age/gender segmentation (e.g., "6-12 Boys"), dedicated theme pages, nearby store integration with WeCom contacts.
-Outcome: A clear, conversion-optimized architecture balancing business needs and user goals.
Homepage v1.5
Homepage v1
Homepage v2
From Vendor handoff’s V1, we steadily wanted to create a home page that’s not just more engaging, but relevant to our user’s demographic. V2 we focused on designing closer to our brand, and hoping to create a feed-like experience populated with content (it didn’t work well as users found the designing lacking in intention and direction).
Member Hub & CRM Strategy
-Focus: Increase member data collection and convert dormant members.
-Key Designs: Redesigned member hub to highlight benefits (points, birthday rewards) at key touchpoints, simplifying data submission.
-Business Impact: Improved data quality for personalized marketing, a key driver for purchase conversion.
We iterated on the Onboarding screen to minimize drop-off rate and to focus on showing the users the key selling points at a glance and more importantly, to create a low-friction interaction to gather user information such as birthday and whether they have children. As these two points contribute to the highest reasons for purchasing.
Small but massive adjustments such as lowering the visibility of skipping this step created massive uptick in the completion of information gathering. From around 20% to the high 90%.
Retention and Reactivation via Birthday month special UI skin, Member Benefits reminder at app launch, Task Center to complete tasks for member points which can then be used to redeem coupons and SKUs in the Rewards Center.
Previous
To-Be
Campaign Hub
-Focus: Engaging campaigns portal housing online & offline events to drive interest and enable offline conversion.
-Key Designs: Evergreen and adhoc campaigns centralized in one hub and other banner touchpoints based on user group specification. (eg. preschoolers will see events for parent-child).
LEGO Ideas is a high intensity cross team effort to localize this global function to the China market. To better gain understanding of the Chinese demographic’s interest in LEGO MOC.
Campaigns such as Pharrell Williams’ Over the Moon utilize MGM mechanism to onboard new members for a chance to purchase first.
Auction House creates social buzz and allows members to bid using their member points, thus creating a loop of purchasing and engaging to accumulate points to spend.
Video Quiz created a componentized mechanism to be reused whenever a campaign needs it, so does the Spin Wheel prize draw.
Campaigns designs are generally unique and can often break our design mold to serve its very specific agenda.
Design System Leadership
-Role: Driver and owner of the China-specific branch of the LEGO Connect Design System (CDS)
-Key Designs: The Global system didn't account for the specific density and UI patterns required by our local apps, as language, design sensibilities are too different, it was not possible to adapt to the one system. As a member of the Design System Committee, I pushed for a separate branch to host only China side DS that can be adapted cross platform, improving design-dev handoff and brand coherence.
-Platforms adapted: WeChat, WeCom, Douyin, Tmall
Results + Reflections
LEGO Group truly is a wonderful company to be designing for. With its mantra of “Learning Through Play” not only for the children builders, but for us working and building the digital products brick by brick. And with its agile methodologies, we are always learning from our failings and quickly adapting with newly gained knowledge to improve our products.
It is a bit of a pity though, that with the Chinese Marketing group, turnarounds and requirements are always so sudden and urgent, that it is not always possible to have enough pre-planning and research groundworks completed before diving straight in. Sometimes needing iterations to get to a good place. But I suppose this is just the way rapid markets such as China functions.
As our leadership team always say: Stay Curious, Stay Brave.