Designing a 3D Product Visualization App for Target - Owned Brands

Room scene designed by Michelle E.

Project Overview

Client: Owned Brands Division of Target

Goal: Develop a 3D application that allows Target employees to create, organize, and showcase collections of 3D product assets for collaboration with coworkers and leadership.

Problem to Solve: Nearly 70% of the app’s target users had minimal to no experience with 3D software and were less tech-savvy. The challenge was to design an intuitive, user-friendly interface that would drive adoption across diverse user groups at Target.

Jump to any section below: The Challenge | The Solution | UX Design Process | Key Results | Takeaways

My Role

About Brendan

UX Design: Led the redesign of key workflows and interface elements.
Research & Testing: Conducted user research, synthesized findings, and validated design updates.
Project Initiatives: Collected user feedback and used that to funnel content to a Jira backlog, contributed to Agile ceremonies, and managed the Miro board for ideation.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Acted as a Subject Matter Expert, bridging communication between development, design, product, and leadership as well as reaching out to other departments at Target to troubleshoot interconnected issues related to our application.

The Challenge

Low Discoverability: Asset search yielded limited results due to poor filtering options and unclear naming conventions.
Unintuitive Button Interactions: The process for creating high-quality 3D renders was unintuitive, options and menus used advanced terminology aimed at more advanced 3d users, and it was sometimes unclear was certain actions achieved.
Lack of Feedback: Users were unaware of the app's background processes (e.g., saving, loading models, or duplicating scenes).
Limited Scene Management: Users, after creating several scene, had trouble managing or sharing them.

Our Solution

In just one calendar quarter we made great strides in transforming the application into a user-friendly, high-performing platform by focusing on human-centered design principles and iterative feedback.

Key Features Delivered

Enhanced Asset Browsing & Search

Introduced thumbnail previews in three-quarter views to provide users with a better visual understanding of 3D assets, increasing search comprehension and quality by 33%.
Designed a revamped search panel, ensuring the search bar was always visible and you could always find the model you were looking for.

Developed intuitive asset categories, streamlined filters for improved discoverability, and created breadcrumbs for product category navigation.
Coordinated teams to enhance search data, increasing search results in some instances as much as 4,300%.
Gave helpful search hints letting users know what they could search for, like specific ID's or categories of products called Workspaces.
A future possible feature was adding a number next to each category icon to show how many assets you may find there. This helps a user know where they may find the most content.

Intuitive Interface Design

Renamed categories, buttons, and functions with human-centered language, reducing user confusion.
Integrated “toasters” (popup notifications) to inform users about app processes (e.g., autosave, completed uploads).
Reworked 3D rendering workflows, simplifying the creation of high-quality images and automating repetitive tasks.

Streamlined User Experience

Made users aware of autosave functionality to reduce user anxiety about losing progress.
Designed over 500 interface elements, ensuring a cohesive, accessible experience.

User-Centered Research

Conducted user interviews, observations, and testing sessions with 21 participants to uncover pain points and usability issues.
Created a user synthesis document comparing findings, which guided targeted design updates.

User synthesis document.

Here I am with the team enjoying conducting a user interview for our software.

Created Help Screens

Many users needed training on the basics of navigating a 3d camera along with other features that don't come natural to non-3d users.
Having a help file allows them to get up and running quickly in the app.

Agile Development Collaboration

Added over 150 user-centric tasks to the Jira backlog, addressing critical UX concerns.
Participated in Scrum events, including backlog prioritization, sprint planning, and feature brainstorming.
Managed the Miro board for feature ideation and team collaboration.

UX Design Process

Research & Strategy

Collaborated with stakeholders to understand user needs, technical constraints, and business goals.
Conducted qualitative research through interviews, testing, and observations to understand the challenges faced by non-technical users.

Wireframing & Prototyping

Created wireframes to illustrate new layouts and interactions.
Iteratively refined designs based on user feedback, ensuring they aligned with best practices for usability and accessibility.

Implementation & Delivery

Delivered redesigned interfaces, search tools, and rendering workflows, ensuring seamless integration with the existing application.
Collaborated with developers to implement autosave, category enhancements, and model database updates.

Key Results

Increased search result quality and accuracy by 33% through visual thumbnails and human-centered language.
Boosted asset discoverability, with search results quantity and quality drastically increased both in search or category navigation.
Improved usability and adoption among less tech-savvy users with human-centered terminology.
Made the render process more intuitive letting new users create quality images quickly.
Delivered a cohesive, intuitive interface with over 500 new elements implemented.

Brendan did an incredible job moving this work forward. He really got this off the ground. It's been such a cool experience - I haven't been on many projects where people who are new to each other make that much progress this quickly!

Sr Project Manager

Target

Takeaways

This project highlighted the importance of designing for users with varying technical expertise. Through human-centered design, iterative testing, and agile collaboration, we delivered a solution that simplified 3D workflows and empowered users to adopt the application confidently.

Tools & Technologies Used

Miro: Feature ideation and collaboration.
Figma and Adobe Creative Suite: Wireframes and prototypes.
Jira: Task management and backlog organization.
Adobe Creative Suite: UI design elements.