Design Within Reach Contract
Co-creating a B2B design tool for the world’s largest modern furniture collection
Role
Creative Strategy
UX Design
Visual Design
Motion Design
The Challenge
DWR Contract, Design Within Reach’s B2B business, sells large volumes to the trade industry, designing and furnishing non-residential projects such as hospitality and institutional spaces. DWRC's regional sales reps were working without a central product inventory or CRM tool. Similarly on the customer side, members of the trade were hunting for specs and inventory at multiple brand websites. A design tool that addresses the needs of sales reps, architects, and design teams requires a vastly different approach than consumer retail.
Solution
Growing business demands for larger orders required new workforce technology and consolidated tools to formalize sales presentations and facilitate communication, quoting, and account management. The final product was a B2B website and tool that supports collaboration between sales reps, brands, and clients.
Result
The Contract website provides a centralized resource that allows designers to search for products, gain access to product specs, configure customizations, communicate with clients, and track orders in progress. This consolidated workflow eliminated many industry tools. From onboarding an account to large scale purchases and deliveries, operational efficiencies allow for shared communication and collaboration for all parties in the design planning process.
Contract is a vastly different approach than consumer retail
As a 4 person embedded UX and strategy team at Language Dept., I attended weekly meetings at DWR headquarters and collaborated closely with client leadership, sales and operation teams, as well as an external development company. I wireframed and designed key pages on the logged-out experience of the Contract website and mentored other UX designers in core areas of product-oriented interfaces, such as product specification and search tools. The site was designed with a modular system of components that served as a foundation to scale a growing product catalog while ensuring design consistency and brand language.
A centralized digital resource
Contract serves the needs of a platform where members of the trade can browse through multiple brands in one place, filling a gap in the industry of a centralized digital resource, and supporting collaboration between architects, designers, brands, and sales reps.
A tool to to consolidate the entire design process
The core of this workflow centers around the collaborative design specification process. We developed a tool that allows clients to view detailed products specs, download symbols, and configure custom products while saving boards by location. On the sales side, a CRM helps reps manage clients, orders, and initiates the purchase order, consolidating the entire process from onboarding clients to tracking orders in progress.
Visualize the brand in motion
My dual role as UX designer and creative strategist helped define the DWRC visual branding and set it apart from Design Within Reach’s consumer e-commerce site. DWRC needed to convey, from the start, that the site was for the trade. I prototyped animation and motion ideas to bring the Contract story to life and to strengthen Design Within Reach’s positioning as the champions of modern design.
