KINGFISHER
Design My Space
In 2017, Kingfisher set up a digital hub with a two-found approach, foster an innovation culture and also to develop digital products and solutions to enhance the business proposition and complement the traditional IT setup
We were aiming to create a seamless and omnichannel customer journey spanning the following steps that a typical customer would go through:
Needs & Triggers – Inspire & Visualise – Plan & Evaluate – Purchase & Deliver – Build & Install – Use & Enjoy – Maintain & Improve
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I was the product manager of the team concentrating on the 1st 2 steps of the journey. I was also the first Kingfisher Product Manager to come onboard the Digital Hub, which kickstarted with consultants.
Product Managing a New Idea
We started out with a rudimentary version of a room visualiser where customers could upload their pictures and then select paint colours to see how they would look on their walls. I managed a cross-functional agile team comprising of developers, designers and analysts and also an external partner who had developed the technology we were using I worked with the lead PM and other PMs in our SAFe structure to develop and plan the strategy of the product.
Over and above the sprint and wave plans that we have, I ensured my team always took some time out to innovate and indulge in some blue-sky thinking. During one such session, I wanted to focus on the Needs and Triggers part of the customer journey and instal ourselves where the customers’ begin searching e.g., on Pinterest and with the developers in my team, we managed to create a POC which could extract the dominant colours of any picture a user selected on Pinterest and match those to products in the B&Q range.
MVP to Full Feature
We started off as a standalone website to gauge user needs and preferences before integrating with the main e-commerce site. I worked on the soft launch and subsequent launch of this standalone site which we called Design My Space.
I made sure to always incorporate feedback into the product development and actively participated in design research sessions. Based on feedback we incorporated features into the product to make the customer journey flow smoothly and make sense.
To make visualising the paint actionable, we introduced the ability to save colours into the customer’s dashboard, and mapped the colours to the nearest available product in B&Qs base and also worked on including guides and tutorials to take the users from the Inspire & Visualise part of their journey through to Plan & Evaluate and Purchase & Deliver
I also advocated for simplifying the customer journey and making it less labour intensive for users by incorporating default pictures that users didn’t have to upload themselves.
I also advocated for the use of the feature to not be placed behind a SSO to maximise use.
I worked on growth-hacking Design My Space to maximise the users we got which would in turn maximise insights for us. I even worked on planning, creating and managing content we put on the social channels to promote our product.
All these additions and the feedback we received, paved the way towards the state the visualiser is in now, integrated into diy.com
