YROO &
SHOPBRAIN
Yroo was a startup that wanted to change how people shop online. The average user visits three different online merchants before making a purchase. Yroo’s line of products performed this function for the user and dynamically performed hundreds of price checks on products and hotels across the web, ensuring that the user always found the best price.
Over the course of 5 years leading the brand and product design vision, the team created multiple products across a range of digital mediums. These products consisted of an online marketplace, mobile web and native applications, and a browser extension. I also led the company rebrand which saw the name change from Yroo to Shopbrain.
YROO - COMPANY BRANDING
Upon joining Yroo, one of my first tasks was to revise the Yroo brand with a more modern friendly appearance. This was done by creating a simple typographic logo that could be used with or without a tagline.
YROO - ONLINE MARKETPLACE
The Yroo website was an online marketplace that allowed users to compare prices from all major retailers. Once a user searched for a specific product, the site would provide a list of the prices, allowing the user to identify where they could get the best price. Additional functionality for the site included a user profile, favoriting lists, notifications, and category information architecture.
YROO - MOBILE APP
The Yroo mobile application was created to provide the same functionality as the Yroo web marketplace. It went through multiple iterations and developments. The application started as mobile web which then transitioned to a native application for both Android and iOS. Additionally, we expanded the functionality of the product, using the phone’s camera to introduce a barcode scanner. The scanner allowed the user to price check a product simply by scanning the barcode.
YROO - BROWSER EXTENSION
The Yroo browser extension provided the user the ability to price-compare a product while using their preferred shopping site. When the user landed on a product details page, they were asked whether they would like to price-compare the selected product.
If the user selected yes, the extension would run a live search and display the results, notifying the user if a better price was found. We also expanded the functionality of the extension to provide price history and reviews, aiding the user in making an informed purchase.
COMPANY REBRAND - SHOPBRAIN
After roughly three years or working under the Yroo brand, marketing research indicated that the current brand name was not resonating with our customer base. Two issues were inhibiting user adoption. First, users did not know how to pronounce the name Yroo, subsequently affecting memory recall and virality. Secondly, the name did not indicate what types of services the company/products provided.
Rebranding to Shopbrain better reflects the services provided. Users could expect an intelligent shopping experience.
SHOPBRAIN - WEBSITE
The goal of the website was to promote brand awareness and drive organic installs by explaining the benefits of the browser extension and mobile products. Prior to Shopbrain’s acquisition by Affirm, we were experimenting with a new website that introduced a new illustration style and provided further details about the products.
SHOPBRAIN iOS & ANDROID
While rebranding the products, we took the opportunity to improve the experience of the product based on learning from the previous three years. We simplified the pages and focused on the mobile specific features such as price check and barcode scanning.
We also explored and were prototyping additional mobile-specific features such as: Conquest Overlay, where the user would be able to compare prices without exiting their preferred shopping application; and Augmented Reality, where the application would utilize image recognition and GPS to scan the immediate environment to search for prices offered by nearby hotels or within local shops.
SHOPBRAIN - BROWSER EXTENSION
The rebranded Shopbrain browser extension also incorporated improvements to optimize the information hierarchy and introduced an updated recommendation section and price prediction feature.
TETHYS - BRAND & WEBSITE
Tethys was an exploratory product designed to add a decentralized currency to the Shopbrain product. I was tasked with creating a brand for the tech company and designing a descriptive website for the venture. In the end, the idea was not pursued due to market and business decisions.
