a
Unclear Category Names
"I don’t know what ‘Thrive’ means, is it skincare?"
"Is Out of Studio out of stock?"
Kayanee
Luxury E-commerce & Digital Experience Design
Overview
Kayanee is a wellness and lifestyle brand backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. My role in this project was a UX & UI designer. I delivered the UX and UI design for Kayanee's bilingual e-commerce launch, design system evolution, responsive page architecture, GTM testing support, and post-launch optimization across key journeys.
GTM Testing Results
100+ issues logged across key journeys; 35 high-severity blockers fixed before launchNavigation Success Rate
~84% Navigation success rate — sessions reaching target collection within 60s after nav click Context 
Bridging the gap: PIF's wellness platform for Saudi Arabian women
Kayanee is a Saudi-born, first-of-its-kind wellness and lifestyle ecosystem for women — uniting content, movement, learning, and luxury commerce under one brand. Backed by PIF and aligned with Vision 2030, it spans e-commerce, iOS/Android apps, and in-store touchpoints.
The first release launched in early 2024 alongside the Riyadh flagship.
The Challenge 
Making eCommerce & App Launch-Ready
When I joined in pre-launch, the brand identity was set and the core pillars defined. By October 2023, eCommerce had emerged as the most critical consumer touchpoint, with the native app close behind. Our goal by that time was to validate and harden both experiences before go-live: prove the journeys end-to-end, remove friction, and stabilise essential functionality across mobile and desktop.
Validation & Synthesis
Go-to-market testing
Before launch, the team executed a Friends & Family Go-To-Market testing programme across remote and on-site sessions to stress-test the Kayanee eCommerce MVP.
Objective
Validate platform performance
"Does the platform function as expected across eCommerce, operations, and fulfillment?"
Identify and prioritize issues
"Which issues must be fixed before launch, and which can be addressed post-release?"
Assess real user behaviour
"Do first-time users understand the value proposition within the first screen?"
"Can users easily complete key tasks like browsing, adding to cart, checking out, and tracking orders?"
Approach
90-min On-site Guided Sessions
Tool: Kayanee website (displayed on desktop and mobile devices)
90-min Online Guided Sessions
Tool: Maze, Zoom call
Participants:
48 participants drawn from a broad pool of target customers to form a representative sample participated in the Friends & Family Testing Sessions
User Tasks
A. Website exploration 10 Mins - First impressions
B. E2E Purchase Flow 60 Mins - (Navigation or search, Category page, BU pages, Checkout, Delivery, Payment, Returns).
C. Feedback 10min
Synthesizing Issues into Themes
Based on the results from both remote and in-person testing, we analyzed over 100 issues and synthesized them into four key themes that aligned with our objectives
Functional
Bugs, system errors, or broken flows
40 issuesExperience
Broader feedback on the user journey
46 issuesFulfillment and service issues
Fulfillment and service issues
8 issuesPresentation
Brand perception and UI content gaps
5 issues UX&UI Improvements 
Critical Painpoints on Navigation
Pre-launch testing showed navigation was a primary source of confusion, impacting discovery and confidence before users even reached product pages.
Main findings
- 37.5% of participants raised confusion around navigation
- 4 users skipped the nav entirely and went straight to search
- 5 users lost track of where they were in the site due to the unclear status in the menu
User quotes
b
Unclear Offer
"I have to click around to understand the business."
"I’m not sure which items are products and which are services"
c
Disappointing Search
"I searched ‘activewear’ and got one result, there are clearly more in the shop."
Mega menu annotated with issue markers (A–C) from GTM testing.
Exploration
I explored alternative mega-menu structures to improve scanability, reduce ambiguity between products and services, and keep the luxury merchandising feel.
Version A
A merchandising-led layout: richer visuals and sub-category tabs to help users browse by intent.
2 col + featured images, horizontal sub-category tabs
Strengths
- Clearer label
- Strong visual merchandising
- Clear separation
- "View All" fallback
Weaknesses
- Limited scalability
- Responsiveness issues
Version B
A structure-first layout: a left-rail and consistent multi-column taxonomy.
Vertical left-rail nav, multi-column text hierarchy
Strengths
- Better "F-Pattern" scanning
- Clear column structure
- Consistent taxonomy
Weaknesses
- Reduced promotional impact
Iteration
Stakeholders request
Stakeholders asked to surface all five business units at top-level navigation, which increased density and created grouping conflicts.
Request: surface all five business units at top-level navigation.
- Top-level bar is too condensed
- Lack of grouping in BU, brand, and utilities
- Shopping experience is fragmented
Iteration after stakeholder request to surface all five business units in the top-level navigation.
Solution
BU-Driven Split Navigation
I split navigation into two tiers—business pillars for exploration, and a utility layer for “Shop” and “Discover”to reduce clutter and align with priorities.
- Aligned with Business priority
- Two-Tier Navigation Improves Clarity
- Level 1 = Experiential + BU navigation
- Level 2 = Utility (Shop, Discover, actions)
- Minimize the layout conflicts
Clearer Wayfinding
I strengthened active states and simplified inner-page menu styling so users can instantly understand where they are and what they can do — without relying on heavy blur overlays.
- Stronger active states across pillars and subcategories so users always know where they are.
- On non-home pages, the mega menu expands on a clean white surface (reduced blur) to improve scanability, accessibility, and performance
Responsive, Localized Mega-Menu
I also designed the mega-menu for mobile and desktop in both light and dark modes (EN/AR).
Post-launch validation (GA4)
How we measured it
In the first 2 weeks post-launch, we tracked two GA4 signals:
(a) top-level nav CTR to validate intent segmentation (Shop vs experiential pillars),
(b) a navigation success funnel: nav_click → collection page view (/collections/…) within 60s, segmented by EN/AR and device.
Outcome
"Shop" was the strongest intent signal, significantly outperforming experiential pillars in CTR, and navigation success reached ~84% (sessions reaching a collection within 60s after a nav click).
Build & Localization 
Shipped a responsive, bilingual design system and full-lifecycle CRM email suite
I led the core layout and visual design for Kayanee's BU pages, creating responsive, production-ready templates in both English and Arabic (RTL) and expanding the design system to support scalable page building.
I also led Kayanee's EN/AR CRM email templates across the full customer lifecycle — delivering specs, QA checklists, staging validation, and live sends — so teams could ship faster with consistent UI across channels.
Outcome 
Launch Highlights and Impact
eCommerce Launch in January 2024
Since its launch, Kayanee has been well-received for its culturally relevant and inclusive approach to women's wellness. The mobile app has been downloaded over 5,000 times after launch on Google Play.
Impact
De-Risked the Launch: Facilitated GTM testing that surfaced 100+ usability issues and resolved critical UX/UI gaps in the Nav and BU pages.
Validated Intent Segmentation: Google Analytics revealed the "Shop" tab significantly outperformed all experiential pillars in click-through rate.
Key Learnings
- Ship fast with tight team loops: Move from concept to production quickly, keep scope sharp, and close loops with PMs, devs, and designers.
- Clear storytelling for varied stakeholders: Frame problem, evidence, options, and impact, then tune the depth to the room.
- Cross-language and culturally grounded rigor: Test EN and AR side by side with native speakers; design RTL by default; use culturally grounded language and imagery over jargon.
- Options over opinions with engineering: Bring multiple viable routes, call trade-offs and build cost, and pick the path that scales.
- E-commerce metrics as design drivers: Track time-to-first-product, catalog click-through, and checkout errors.
Jiajing Zhang's Portfolio 2023 - 2026 
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