Similac is the number 1 brand of baby formula chosen by hospitals, and recognized by consumers as a long trusted brand. It is made by Abbott Nutrition, a leader in nutrition science, research and development with the goal to deliver nutrition products and education that meet the changing needs of families across the world. To give babies a strong start, Similac offers a diverse line of research-driven products that provide the essential protein, minerals, and other nutrients to support an infant’s growth.
To stay relevant and maintain its trusted brand status in a competitive market, Similac's website was planned to be overhauled and launched 2021. The Similac brand was refreshed in anticipation of the redesign to update the look and feel. The UX team partnered closely with UI and visual designers to advise design and styling of components and wireframes as the system was developed.
Working directly with the strategy and analytics teams, we made improvements based on data, research, and best practices to address user needs and hit business goals. To connect our users with Similac’s high quality content faster and easier, we consolidated existing content, reduced page count, developed more scannable content, and increased the ability to filter by attribute on landing pages. We built in solutions to increase consumer acquisition, from the site through organic traffic as well as paid media.
The redesign included some big technical changes; migration to a new CMS platform, incorporation of an ecommerce vendor, creation of a design system, and new third party integrations. With the help of our business and development partners, we implemented technical solutions that would improve functionality, with user needs, and business goals in mind.
As the redesign touched every part of the site, the creation of a design system was critical. It was designed to be the baseline source of truth for the Similac design team and project partners, to build off of, improve user interactions, create efficiency, and save money over time. This resource houses component catalogs, documentation, functional annotation, style & use guides with links to supporting software apps and platforms.
Our small UX team advocated for the creation of the design system and adoption of new studio software and practices. We pitched the value of a repeatable design system to the leadership team emphasizing increased efficiency and savings over-time, by reducing instances of costly customizations and creating a more structured and guided way for our team to build solutions for product problems.
I had the opportunity to contribute to every aspect of the design system's creation. We leveraged design thinking and atomic design principles to build the system. I worked as a designer and architect to create user flows, sitemaps, wireframes, prototypes, and UI elements, leading the design on some key sections of the redesign.
The design system was implemented for the Similac web redesign, the impact of which was felt across all teams that contributed to the redesign project—it helped to build trust and improve transparency among teams and disciplines, while unifying the interface and reducing the need for expensive custom design solutions. The Similac redesign is set to launch in 2021.
Sketch, Abstract, Overflow, Invision, Zeplin, Zeroheight, Adobe Experience Manager, Magento, Adobe Rendition
