The Challenge
Going to UPS isn’t always convenient — so needing to return Rent the Runway (a rental clothing subscription business) items up to 4+ times a month depending on membership tier can be a frustrating part of the experience.

The transportation team at Rent the Runway launched its initial pilot of their home pickup service in April 2021 with the goal of decreasing cost per shipment while offering customers the most convenient return solution yet.

In October 2021, survey data showed that 55% of members in home pickup markets used the service to save on time, with ‘faster returns’ and ‘not wanting to leave the house’ tying at a close second. While home pickup coverage expanded to more markets in partnership with 3 vendors, so did the need for a more seamless scheduling experience. In order to increase adoption and efficiency, we needed a way for customers to schedule a home pickup in the RTR product experience.

The Approach
As lead designer on the Delivery & Returns Experience product squad, I worked closely with the team and key stakeholders to envision a future state and design an MVP experience of home pickup with the following goals:

• Enable customers to schedule a home pickup for their returns seamlessly on desktop + mobile web and in the iOS app

• Create a more delightful return experience overall

• Educate customers about home pickup through marketing communications

• Increase overall home pickup adoption to 60%*

Given that this was a new return solution, I wanted to first better understand the current state of home pickup and determine: 1.) customer pain points with the service and 2.) where users might expect to schedule a pickup in the Rent the Runway product experience.

I conducted user testing with 6 active members (5 home pickup users, 1 non-user) using high level concepts for different scheduling placements within the membership cross-ship flow (when a customer lets us know what items they’ll be returning while placing an order for new items at the same time), uncovering the following key insights:

At the same time, the team went through a visioning exercise to imagine what home pickup might look like 3-5 years in the future. I started by mapping out the customer journey for members and one-time renters to help identify areas of opportunity.

The future visioning exercise helped the team to gain stakeholder buy-in and define phase 1 of our MVP with a north star in mind:

Based on the visioning exercise and user research, the following design principles were defined to help guide the rest of the project:

1. Low Complexity: Experience is clear, self-explanatory, and fits seamlessly into the product.

2. In the Moment: Provides easy access to information at a convenient and natural place within the experience.

3. Reflects Progress: Reflects pickup status in-product to create a more cohesive experience overall.

Next, I sketched out initial concepts and wireframes for the home pickup scheduler in-product, putting ideas in front of engineering early and often to vet out what was feasible for phase 1.

Once the team and stakeholders were aligned on a concept, I put a prototype in front of active members (7 non-home pickup users, 1 one-time user) again with the following objectives:

• Determine if customers understand how to schedule a home pickup in the RTR experience

• Determine how or where customers might be able to edit/cancel a pickup outside of the ordering flow

• Understand how best to position and educate customers about “LiveSwap” (having returns picked up on the same day a new shipment arrives)

From a second round of user testing, we found that users generally understood the workflow, but many mentioned they probably wouldn’t use home pickup since they have a UPS around the corner. With some changes to the UI and copy, we took monitoring customer adoption as it relates to geo and living situation as an action item for our learning plan.

Moving into final UI, I worked closely with UX Writer & Content Strategy and Product Marketing partners on final copy and go-to-market communications around home pickup. In order to keep the experience as seamless as possible, I leveraged our design system and kept styling for the scheduler similar to the bag as a more transactional step in the workflow. Finally, I worked with engineering on handing off desktop, mobile web, and app screens via Jira tickets and conducted visual QA.

Phase 1 Launch
For Phase 1, we launched the scheduler in the website and iOS app in June 2022 to members who place a new order across 12 zip codes in Austin, Dallas, Houston and Washington DC. From June to July, we launched incrementally across markets in Chicago, NYC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, San Diego, and Seattle. Currently we’ve reached ~42% adoption WoW across all markets up from ~9% in April 2022.

Future Phases
As a fast follow, we enabled the ability to schedule a “LiveSwap” for members in 2-day markets (where a customer can schedule a pickup for when their shipment arrives in 2 days from when the order was placed without their account going overdue).

In addition, we are working on enabling one-time rental users to schedule a pickup in product, followed by decoupling the scheduler from the ordering flow to create more flexibility in use.

Learning Plan & What’s Next
While the primary metric for home pickup has been adoption, the team is also monitoring one-time vs. repeat usage, time to complete the workflow, understanding of “LiveSwap” concept, time to return, successful pickup rate, and overall customer satisfaction (CSAT).

Although it’s still early, we’ve learned that the biggest barriers to adoption is education and preference to current routine (customers who already have package services, live close to a UPS location, etc.) based on a recent non-adopter survey and are actively working on our next iteration.