Founded in 1858, Macy’s is one of the largest and most iconic department store chains in the US. With 500+ stores and its ecommerce site macys.com, it’s able to offer affordable apparel, home goods, beauty products, and accessories to customers around the globe. It’s also the owner of Bloomingdale’s, a luxury department store chain with 50+ stores across the US.
We partnered with Macy’s to help the brand meet increased demand for online apparel, accessories, and home goods purchases. Our work designing 10+ digital products included:
Aside from product innovation design, design systems, and operations, we also established and spread an improved design culture by hosting meetings and workshops, coordinating design projects from disparate teams, and fostering an environment of design thinking across the organization.
customer and associate interviews
unified digital experience for Macy's and Bloomingdale's
Atomic Design system to maintain consistency and allow for innovation
Macy's internal design leadership had innovative and ambitious plans for how to bring together a multitude of different platforms. We helped define that future vision by assessing legacy and current systems and then creating a multi-phase, multi-year plan addressing culture, systems, and communication.
In order to meet aggressive timelines for upgrading a legacy system and designing a new one, we began with the former, documenting and identifying potential optimizations for multiple platforms. We then created a 2.0 framework for all new products, helping development teams save time and gracefully sunset older systems.
Internal software is often deprioritized when it comes to spending, and our team aimed to prove future efficacies and justify investments for several internal systems. We developed a new program of rapid prototyping, user testing, and design iteration that proved potential savings and revenue increases for new features and digital products.