From abstract concept to concrete artifact
Interactive Retail Touchpoint
UX Writing | Mobile-First Web App | Goldlink | 2 Weeks
Background
Goldlink sells jewelry fused with memory. We were building a holiday pop-up shop selling bracelets packaged with a personal story written by customers.
Challenge
Get customers to write a short story about an intimate moment in under 10 minutes.
Result
62% form completion rate in an average of 7 minutes — higher engagement than we predicted, while still keeping people moving through the experience.
My Role
I designed the interactive storytelling experience. UX writing focused on striking confident, friendly tone to build trust and guide users seamlessly through a vulnerable step-by-step flow.
Background
Goldlink is a speculative pop-up retail experience spanning social, digital, and physical channels, demonstrating opportunities for the future of jewelry.
Insights
Jewelry is shorthand for memories.
There is a market opportunity for jewelry that commemorates important relationships without the confines of gender norms.
Collaborative Product Design
End product has three components, each requiring customer participation:
a photo
accompanied by a short narrative of a shared memory
a gold bracelet stamped with a word that evokes the memory
Challenge
The product quality hinged on content generated by the customer. How could we get people to open up and feel safe enough to share a special memory?
Ideate, Test, Learn
We started by imagining a person-to-person storytelling experience. A “guide” would lead customers through a series of prompts to get them talking, and then we would string together a story. We prototyped it face-to-face, and also with voices only.
It failed both ways.
The experience was too intense and vulnerable, and the stories we collected were meh.
Land on a Way Forward
To make storytelling easier for participants, I took inspiration from the sweet writings coming home in my 2nd grader’s backpack and designed a simple fill-in-the-blank form to capture a memory.
I sketched out a simple wireframe to convey the idea to rest of the team.
Implement
I designed the digital storytelling user flow and content. My goal was to break storytelling down into manageable chunks. We put care into the tone and voice to make the experience feel human but without the vulnerability of another person listening in.
I used Typefrom as a tool because it allowed us to build quickly and and upload media while maintaining a branded world that didn’t feel like a survey.
I tested it with 12 users over two days to confirm functionality and clarity and to generate example stories. User testing resulted in copy edits, changes in the order of steps, and a tone adjustment.
Results
“My story just flowed.”
- Emil, participant
62% of the 55 customers who started the interaction completed the digital storytelling touchpoint.
The content generated was all over the place, and the UX flow accommodated a variety of contexts. We were also pleased to see people crafting gifts for friends and family whom they wouldn’t typically give jewelry.
More about our end-to-end design process:
Phygital Experience Design