Pack Elephant
Is a start-up that curates gift boxes of unique goods promoting the work of independent, underrepresented artisans.
Overview
A Value-driven Gift Management Platform
Corporate gifting is a huge market sector.
* 3 in 5 enterprises fall short of meeting their goals for supplier diversity
* 270,000+ artisans don’t make enough sales to be financially sustainable.
Unfortunately, most of that money is spent on mass producted, low value products created overseas. At worst, this is yet another sector contributing to global inequality and at best, its a missed opportunity to support independent artisans in the US. Pack Elephant recognized that .
Pack Elephant simplifies gifting for good by creating a centralized gift management platform and providing curated gift boxes.
Carefully Curated
Community Driven
Customized
Project scope and role
Lead UX Designer + Researcher & Copy Writer + Film Maker
Pack Elephant was a year old when they came to me to move bring their platform into alignment with their growing business.
Competitive market analysis as well as user and domain research
Designing a robust ecommerce platform featuring customization, multi-shipping, tiered subscription, account dashboard that includes data visualization, order forms, invoicing, wallet as well as a vendor account registration process
User testing on early iterations
Page layout design for Landing, About, How It Works
Marketing Videos
Mission and Vision statements
Overview
Three Touch Points
As a marketplace, Pack Elephant has three key touchpoints: the enterprise businesses who give gifts, the small businesses who make gifts and the beneficiaries who receive gifts. Clearly the satisfaction and engagement of each of these touchpoints is crucial.
user journey
Four Journeys
Pack Elephant’s business model was predicated on membership. Three levels of membership at different rates afford access to different features of the site. PE was envisioned itself first and foremost as BtoB targeting businesses with regular and robust gifting needs. As the pandemic shrank this niche (eliminating conferences and other key events), PE had to pivot to embrace the business to consumer pipeline.
Non-membership is thus the fourth pillar of the model, creating a division between the three membership groups who have access to customization and the guest users who only have access to pre-assembled packs.
key features
Filtering
The filter was built to reflect the PE mission.
Pack Elephant’s mission is the unifying force of the platform design. The four primary targets of corporate giving efforts are: investing in the local economy, contributing to supplier diversity, and promoting ethical business practices for environment and society. The filter enables businesses (and consumers) to search for products based on their fullfillment of these missions.
key features
Customization
The great differentiator between the registered and guest experience is the ability to fully customize packs. The customization process has three steps. I designed both a mobile and desktop version of the customization process.
Sticky collapsible pack view allows for easy overview and edits without taking up too much screen space
Addressing card to shipping name enables users to create a single pack for a group while still personalizing the cards.
Registered options for packaging are stored and automatically applied to enable faster checkout.
key features
Multiple Shipments
Multiship needed to enable users to make multiple shipments of both different packs as well as multiple shipments of the same pack while still enabling users to to fullfill key membership perks like customized cards.
registration and account dashboard
Value Added
At the core of the business model is the idea that businesses wan to do good… and want to be able to track the good they do. Data visualization not only provides Pack Elephant valuable insight but enhances the offering to its clients. I designed data visualization to allow members to track their impact on a granular level. They can view their impact in any of the key mission areas: economic, regional, diversity and inclusion or ethical business practices (both environmental and social equity). The Impact dashboard and each of these core mission impact visualizations are viewable below.
I also designed mid fidelity registration and account flows for both members and and vendors. The client account dashboard includes:
Impact statistics presented as interactive data visualization
Favorite makers and products
Order invoicing and tracking
Profile with: basic acocunt settings, gifting preferences, stored addresses and stored payment methods
The maker account includes:
Order and shipment tracking
Inventory listing and management
Income tracking and payment portal
* please note these designs are mid fidelity and represent early color iterations
Flow chart and site map
A Map for the Future
As a startup, Pack Elephant wasn’t ready to build out all of its features for the MVP so it was important to chart the course for the platform to expand in the future to ensure that the site remains consistent and coherent as it grows.