My role: Lead UX/UI Designer: research, information architecture, interaction, and visual design. Solo, two weeks. Tools: Adobe XD, Illustrator, Google Forms, Jira.
The problem
Zara's website was so awkward that people joked about it, and during COVID-19, with stores closing and online revenue suddenly critical, that friction was sending shoppers straight to competitors.
When people go out of their way to joke about your user interface, it's time for a new one.
What I did
1:1 interviews and a 9-question survey with 21 Millennial and Gen Z shoppers, plus a competitor audit. Two themes surfaced: hard navigation and a cluttered, un-minimal interface.
Reworked the sitemap with Hick’s Law: merged Kids into each gender, gave Sale its own tab, and renamed "Clothing" to "Ready-to-Wear" for a more premium feel.
Centered the logo, balanced the menu to four items per side, added currency switching, and made Sale red: easy to find, nothing to think about.
Multiple click-to-expand images instead of endless scrolling, horizontal size buttons, a sequential size → color → add-to-cart flow, and model-height notes to help with fit.
Paper prototypes → a final high-fidelity desktop prototype that mirrors the simplicity of Zara’s products and physical stores.
The outcome
A complete concept redesign and final prototype that keeps Zara's brand intact while making the experience minimal and intuitive enough that shoppers stay instead of bouncing to a competitor.
Research and UX laws brought the simplicity of Zara's stores to the website. The brand itself never changed.
What I'd do next: validate the new navigation and product-page flows head-to-head against the live site with an A/B test.
Key decisions & trade-offs
Fixed the experience without proposing a new identity. Less creative latitude, but it respects Zara’s brand equity and keeps the work realistic and shippable.
Cut and merged sitemap entries and balanced the nav to four items per side with a centered logo. Fewer top-level choices in exchange for faster, lower-effort decisions.
Leaned on patterns shoppers already know rather than novel UI, and used the Aesthetic-Usability Effect to make the premium feel do real usability work.
Skills demonstrated
Want the full story?
The research, the sitemap rework, the navigation and product-page redesigns, and the final prototype.
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