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Fashion & Lifestyle Directory: a place to find everything

Faced with intense internal politics and tight resources, I steered the strategic turnaround of an environment used by 36% of all sessions of Zalando. By securing VP sponsorship and designing a component-based grid, our tiny team (me as Designer, PM, Engineer & DA) unlocked quick iterations while hitting user desire and absolute regulatory compliance.

The problem

The directory page was an absolute corporate bottleneck. It was a stiff, dry list of categories, could take months to have entry points added and definitely did not allow for the dynamic and seasonal nature of Zalando’s assortment.

Different markets regularly broke consistency to push localized content, and marketing constantly injected titles that meant nothing to our customers. The result was massive cognitive load for millions of users on a page stuck in legacy and conflicting business goals.

My role

As the sole product designer on a lean team, I was actively involved in the the end-to-end strategy. My job was to run user research, design the core architecture and act as a diplomatic bridge between competing stakeholders and executive leadership.

The process

Aligning on vision: Instead of jumping into Figma, we aligned our tiny team by mapping out a product vision and a PRFAQ to define what success looked like for the customer. We also ran qualitative & quantitative research in different phases.

Navigating reviews: I designed solution concepts and successfully defended our user-centric approach across two critical executive review phases to secure the green light.

The modular framework: To avoid a risky launch, we built a component-based, modular grid. This allowed us to run isolated A/B tests on single modules without any fear of breaking the wider app and allowing different markets to curate and publish locally relevant content.

Data & compliance: Partnering with our analyst, we monitored a neutral GMV baseline while tracking clicks, product views and wishlist additions. Crucially, I designed the entire system to be fully DSA and EAA compliant, integrating flawless contrast and dynamic text sizing, as well as integrated with the current content tools.

Measurable impact & key learnings

Broke past corporate politics: Transformed a historically stagnant, politically stuck page into a fluid space capable of fast, constant data-driven evolution, escalable to all 29 markets.

Scaled layout architecture: The responsive grid system I built was so effective it was later absorbed into Zalando's main design system for other teams.

Proved design diplomacy: Data and empathy got this massive company moving in the same direction.

Drove proposition discovery & testing: Unlocked high visibility for lesser-known Zalando offerings and established an agile framework for fast, low-risk testing of new customer propositions.

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I’m Manu.

Check out my Graphic Design work, too.