Thérapie Clinic (2021 - 2023)
The Context
I worked at Thérapie Clinic as Lead Product Designer from 2021 until 2023. Thérapie represented an enormous opportunity - it’s a brick-and-mortar chain of aesthetic clinics that wanted to revolutionise by ensuring every part of the business was digitally transformed and controlled in-house.
A tech team was brought in to build all the systems that the clinics use from scratch. This included employee systems (like the Diary, booking engines) as well as the websites for the group - including an e-comm engine. My primary role was to head up the customer-facing websites, while leading the other designers with their projects - ensuring a better design process and alignment.
Being part of an in-house team was a first for me. My prior experience was always with client work and fixed projects. I settled into the role to build a rhythm around campaigns and service/product launches while designing and planning for bigger items.
Some of the biggest challenges in the role involved educating the stakeholders and non-tech teams on new ways of work; graduating from a “family-business” to a well-oiled machine. It didn’t come easy - and the struggle to constantly prove our value, unfortunately, didn’t work out in the short time we were all there.
Along with macro-economic challenges which meant that customers weren’t purchasing luxury services, the decision to downsize the team and move in a different direction affected me along with others.
The Results
Some of the more notable achievements during the period are:
Led the creation and maintenance of a group design system
Introduced remote user testing to enable validation and research from prospective customers in 3 different regions
Designed a fresh website for the new region launch in the USA (view here)
Designed and tested page templates to both satisfy user needs and streamline development, leading to quicker product launches
Worked with, and assisted with all efforts across the group from Marketing, Website/App, E-comm flows, and post-sale communications
Design efforts from my team increased conversion rates by 2% year on year
My Contribution
I was the lead product designer for the team of 3. Additionally, I was the full-time, sole, individual contributor for the “Growth” team which handled the customer-facing websites for the group’s 3 products in 3 markets.
My main contributions were improving the UX/UI of the UK/Ire Thérapie Clinic website as well as designing a brand new website for the US launch.
I led the creation and maintenance of the design system as well as introduced remote user testing to get valuable customer insights.
What I enjoyed
Being part of product strategy and being able to shape the direction of the development team, through a largely autonomous team structure
Fast turnaround times on ideas and concepts. No real bureaucracy and legacy processes to contend with
Embracing MVP and lean mindset; no feature wasn’t re-evaluated and tweaked after launch
Learning to use measurement tools like Google Analytics and Looker to show results of initiatives
Learning and improving on my UI skills
Where I struggled
Balancing team leadership with being an entrenched individual contributor (where the IC work was full time)
Documentation and proof of value - this is something I will do better in my next role
Taking ownership of the roadmap and making my case strongly - this is normally natural to me, but in this case the leadership took control of the roadmap with very little wiggle room
Tools I used
Requirements gathering
User journeys
Wireframes
Prototypes
UI Design
Design System
Figma
Miro