Elevating the Baby Gifting Experience
Scaling a luxury gifting ritual across boutique and web.
CLIENT
DURATION
$2.1K
BUDGET
1 year
PLATFORM
Lead Product Designerr
Role
User interviews, behavioral analytics,design using a defying system, user personas, journey mapping, user flow.
Team
Product Manager, Designers, Engineers, and Accessibility teams
Methods
Figma, Figjam, Maze, Photoshop, Illustrator
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Maze, Photoshop, Illustrator
Discover
Define
Ideate
Design
Test
CONTEXT
Luxury gifting at Dior is deeply personal and curated, yet the behind-the-scenes process was fragmented and difficult to scale across boutiques and digital touchpoints. This project focused on translating a high-touch service experience into a seamless digital journey — without losing its emotional value. Working cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Retail, and the Dior design system team, we redesigned the end-to-end flow for giftee, gifter, and sales assistant, creating a unified experience across physical boutiques and web. The result was a structured, scalable service launched in flagship boutiques, aligning operational efficiency with the emotional expectations of luxury clients.
OVERVIEW
Baby Dior gifting is a deeply personal luxury ritual typically facilitated by boutique sales assistants. However, the process relied heavily on manual coordination and fragmented tools. This project redesigned the gift list service ecosystem, creating a scalable omnichannel experience across boutiques and digital channels (boutique tablets, web experience for gifters, and internal tools for sales assistants).
THE PROBLEM
Baby Dior gift lists were designed as intimate, high-touch boutique experiences. However, behind the elegance, the service relied heavily on manual coordination and disconnected tools. While human assistance was assumed to preserve luxury, the operational setup created friction for both customers and sales assistants. The challenge was not the emotional value of the ritual — it was the lack of a scalable, connected service infrastructure.
Behavioural and operational patterns we observed:
When a luxury ritual depends on manual systems, scale breaks
01
The experience relied on manual coordination.
In-store assistants relied on spreadsheet tracking, and disconnected systems to manage gift lists.
02
Sales assistants carried the operational burden.
Processes were time-consuming, repetitive, and difficult to manage across boutiques.
03
Customers lacked autonomy and visibility.
Gifters had limited access to updates or purchase status, reducing confidence and continuity.
04
The service broke between channels.
No unified experience connected boutique and web, and lacked infrastructure for international rollout.
Despite the emotional importance of births, celebrations, and milestones, the system supporting the experience felt operationally heavy and digitally fragmented.These patterns pointed to a service design problem — not a luxury positioning one.
THE DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
Rather than digitizing a list, the opportunity was to redesign the service architecture behind the gifting experience.
How might we transform a high-touch boutique ritual into a scalable omnichannel service without losing its emotional value?
MY ROLE
I led the end-to-end design of the Baby Dior gifting service, from discovery through boutique launch. Working closely with Product, Retail, and Engineering teams, I mapped the full ecosystem across three roles — giftee, gifter, and sales assistant — to uncover operational gaps and moments of friction within the gifting journey. I translated insights from boutique teams and internal stakeholders into scalable interaction patterns and service flows, ensuring the experience worked seamlessly across boutique and digital touchpoints. Throughout the project I partnered with Engineering to align the solution with existing systems and the Dior design framework, guiding the work from early service blueprints and wireframes to high-fidelity prototypes and final implementation. My focus was balancing two priorities: • preserving the emotional quality of the luxury gifting ritual • reducing operational complexity for boutique teams
PROJECT KICKOFF
The project began with an in-person workshop in Paris with Dior's product, design, and engineering teams. Together we mapped the gifting ecosystem, defined key user roles, and aligned on business goals and operational constraints. Through collaborative exercises and journey mapping, we identified where friction existed across the service — particularly within boutique workflows and cross-channel handoffs. This early alignment helped establish a shared strategic direction and ensured the design work focused on the most meaningful opportunities before moving into deeper research and concept exploration.
TARGET USERS
First group: "The Fashionista" & "The Young Rich Kid" gifters.
This group are frequent Dior customers who are digitally confident and highly engaged with the brand. They expect exclusivity, personalization, and a premium gifting experience that reflects Dior's luxury standards.
Second group: "The Entrepreneur" gifter.
This group includes customers purchasing Dior gifts for special occasions, often for the first time. They rely more on curated recommendations, clear guidance, and reassurance when selecting products.
Third group: "The Access to the Dream" & "The Sustainable Conscious" giftees.
These users engage with Dior for meaningful moments or entry-level products. They value emotional connection, elegant packaging, and transparency around sustainability and product craftsmanship.
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
Understanding needs across roles and contexts.
We began by understanding needs across roles and contexts. Rather than focusing on a single user, we mapped the entire gifting ecosystem across the three roles to identify where friction point.
01
The giftee
(often a parent, time-poor, emotionally involved)
02
The gifter
(seeking guidance, reassurance, and elegance)
03
The sales assistant
(needing speed, clarity, and operational reliability)
We used qualitative and operational research, this included stakeholder interviews with retail and digital teams, process mapping of in-store flows, and analysis of recurring pain points and system errors. An early assumption was that friction was primarily emotional — that users simply needed more inspiration and storytelling to feel confident in creating or purchasing from a gift list. Research quickly revealed something more complex.
KEY INSIGHTS
Gift lists are emotionally driven, but operationally complex. They could not easily see product availability or purchase status. While gifters and giftees approached the experience with sentiment and intention, sales assistants were navigating fragmented tools, manual workarounds, and unclear system feedback. What appeared to be a simple celebratory journey was, behind the scenes, highly procedural. Sales assistants did not need more features. They needed fewer steps, clearer flows, and tools that reduced friction instead of adding layers of interaction.
Service Architecture
(is to clarify where the system failed)
DESIGN STRATEGY
Designing for clarity, confidence, and continuity
Role-based clarity
Each user — giftee, gifter, and sales assistant — required a tailored interface logic without exposing system complexity.
Guided decision making
Support product discovery without overwhelming users.
Omnichannel continuity
The journey had to feel seamless whether initiated in a boutique or web, ensuring consistency across touchpoints.The objective was not to add features,but to structure information and flows
ITERATION & CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
Evaluating competing interaction models
To validate the right strategic direction, I developed and tested three competing interaction models, each grounded in a different assumption about how users make decisions.
01
Expanded Product Display
Assumption: Users need more visible information to compare confidently. This model surfaced additional attributes directly within the product card to reduce the need for deeper navigation. It prioritized transparency and comparison efficiency. Result: Too visually dense.
02
Category Based Discovery
Assumption: Users decide based on contextual intent rather than product specifications. This approach reorganized listings around use cases and gifting occasions, aligning with users' mental models. It aimed to reduce cognitive load through contextual grouping. Result: Helpful but still required deep navigation
03
Smart Progressive Disclosure
Assumption: Decision speed improves when only critical information is visible upfront. This concept minimized default content and revealed secondary details on demand. It reduced visual noise while preserving depth when needed. Result: This approach became the foundation of the final solution.
Strategic Alignment
Each concept iteration was reviewed and validated with:
- Dior’s updated design system
- Refined typography
- Improved visual hierarchy
VISUAL & SYSTEM INTEGRATION
During the project, Dior introduced an updated digital design system. The solution therefore needed to align with the evolving brand framework.
- Dior's design system
- Typography, spacing, and tone guidelines
- Content strategy across markets
Luxury was expressed not through excess, but through precision and consistency. By integrating the new visual language across both retail and web touchpoints, the experience achieved aesthetic continuity without compromising operational clarity.
FINAL REFLECTION
This project reinforced that service design decisions are strategic infrastructure not just interface improvements.
The improvements came from simplifying interactions and guiding users through the journey. Many frustrations originated from internal system complexity.
By focusing on operational architecture rather than feature addition, we transformed a manually sustained boutique ritual into a scalable, connected omnichannel experience.
Designing for multiple roles, giftees, gifters, and sales assistants required understanding the relationships between each role and the operational workflows connecting them.
In future iterations, I would further explore automation and real-time visibility across channels, partnering with data and retail teams to strengthen personalization while reducing internal complexity.
Experience the journey yourself — link to see the website (Baby Dior Gift List).