Lounge
Focusing on evolving visual language and core shopping journeys to support a more premium brand direction.
Role
Senior Product Designer
SCOPE
Strategy, UX, UI, design system
As the sole Product Designer at Lounge, I led the evolution of Lounge’s mobile-first e-commerce experience as the brand shifted toward a more premium, luxury-affordable positioning.
• Enabled Lounge’s transition from a lingerie-first brand to a scalable lifestyle platform
• Established a reusable design system across navigation, PLP, PDP, and cart
• Reduced design debt and improved consistency across core shopping journeys
Before: Legacy navigation and product detail experiences were designed around a narrower product range, using rigid grid-based layouts and rounded visual patterns. While effective at the time, this approach did not scale as Lounge expanded into new top-level categories such as footwear, accessories, and clothing, and it limited flexibility in hierarchy, content presentation, and overall premium perception.
The existing navigation and product layouts were designed for a limited product range. As new categories were introduced, the experience became harder to scale, less flexible, and increasingly inconsistent across journeys.
This affected:
Product discoverability
Content hierarchy
The perception of a premium brand experience
Before: Legacy navigation and product detail experiences were designed around a narrower product range, using rigid grid-based layouts and rounded visual patterns. While effective at the time, this approach did not scale as Lounge expanded into new top-level categories such as footwear, accessories, and clothing, and it limited flexibility in hierarchy, content presentation, and overall premium perception.
Defining the Product Strategy
Hypothesis
If we improve hierarchy, navigation clarity, and browsing flexibility across the journey, users will feel more confident exploring larger ranges — leading to stronger engagement and conversion.
To guide decision-making, I defined a small set of experience principles that applied holistically across PDPs, PLPs, cart, and navigation.
Experience Principles
Design for scale — layouts and patterns needed to support future category growth
Reduce design debt — prioritise reusable components over one-off solutions
Elevate perception — evolve the visual language without sacrificing usability
Discovering the Opportunity
Analytics showed that over 97% of Lounge traffic came from mobile. Despite this, users frequently moved between categories before committing to a product, pointing to uncertainty during the discovery phase rather than friction at checkout.
Behavioural data and session recordings confirmed that drop-offs occurred primarily while browsing, especially as Lounge introduced higher-priced, more considered clothing items.
Opportunity
Shift the experience from transaction-led to browse-led by designing a mobile-first discovery journey that encouraged exploration, improved product understanding, and better reflected Lounge’s move toward a more premium, lifestyle-focused brand.
The Visual Language
Insight
With the vast majority of users shopping on mobile, small inefficiencies had an outsized impact on engagement and conversion.
Decision
Rather than adapting desktop designs for mobile, I designed mobile-first, ensuring:
Clear content prioritisation
Accessible tap targets
Simplified navigation pathways
Below is an example of the updated PLP grid controls, designed to support different browsing behaviours on mobile. Users can switch between a focused single-product view, a standard two-column layout, or a more aspirational overview that enables faster scanning across larger product ranges.
The Audience
Who are we designing for?
The redesign focused on a core audience of budget-conscious professionals and families who:
Are typically aged 25–30+
Value convenience, clarity, and reliability
Have a steady income and can afford a modest increase in price point
Expect a polished experience without unnecessary complexity
Understanding this audience ensured the experience remained aspirational without alienating existing customers.
The Outcome
Insights from user behaviour showed that Lounge customers strongly resonated with the platform’s clean, simple UX. Any redesign needed to respect this familiarity while introducing a more refined, premium feel, which I believed had be achieved with these visual enhancements.
Design decisions were guided by four key focus areas:
Navigation & Discovery — clearer pathways to products and categories
PLP — improved hierarchy, spacing, and product scannability
PDP — stronger visual storytelling with clearer decision points
My Bag — simplified structure to support confident checkout behaviour
The Design System Impact
Rather than rebuilding the system, core tokens and components were refined to support a more premium expression while maintaining functional consistency.
Focus areas
Refined spacing, rhythm, and corner treatments
Standardised global components across journeys
Scalable patterns designed for reuse
Results & Impact
The redesign delivered measurable improvements across the journey:
+8% increase in conversion year on year
Improved engagement on PLPs and PDPs
Higher adoption of reusable components
Stronger alignment between brand perception and experience
This project reinforced the importance of designing systems, not just screens. By prioritising scalability and reuse early, the platform is better positioned to support future growth without sacrificing experience quality. Looking ahead, I’d explore further personalisation in discovery flows and enhance testing with longitudinal user data to inform prioritisation decisions.
