Bryan Oh: Pioneering the Digital Experience in Luxury Fashion

In our mobile concentrated world, product and graphic design plays a vital role in forming consumer experiences, especially within the high-stakes realm of luxury fashion. 

Bryan Oh, New York City based designer, stands as a forerunner of this evolution. With a detailed background spanning five years in product design and seven in graphic design, Oh's expertise cuts across diverse industries, from fashion and tech to construction and competitive sports, offering a unique perspective on user engagement and brand storytelling.

Oh's distinctive approach stems from the relation between these two disciplines, allowing him to implement designs with both structural integrity and elegant visual appeal. "The intersection of these two disciplines allows me to approach design with both structure and play," Oh explains, "giving me the room to experiment, explore, and input projects with graphic richness, while still maintaining clarity and hierarchy." 

This philosophy underlines his work, whether it’s a UI sprint to boost sales, a complete app redesign, or the development of marketing history that reinforces brand identity while highlighting unique product characteristics. His particular enjoyment for fashion and luxury brands is known in his commitment to enhancing visual systems, crafting memorable experiences, and finding moments of fun while always striving for work that is intentional, personal, and visually engaging.

The Evolving Digital Landscape of Luxury Fashion

The luxury fashion market is undergoing a significant shift in its approach to product design and UX/UI. Traditionally cemented in tactile, in-person experiences, the challenge now lies in transforming that sense of exclusivity and atmosphere into a digital space.

The fashion industry will change dramatically by 2030, as 54% of shoppers research products on social media and roughly 70% of online shoppers read at least one customer review before making a purchase. 

According to Oh, luxury fashion in UI/UX design today trends heavily towards clean, minimal interfaces that rely on striking photography to evoke the brand and build an immersive world. 

Websites, in particular, are no longer simple points of e-commerce but powerful tools for world-building, designed to attract users to explore, connect emotionally, and delve deeper into the brand’s narrative and lifestyle. 

"While physical stores remain key for delivering the product itself," Oh notes, "the website serves not just a place of ecommerce but also plays a vital role in conveying the brand experience beyond the storefront, reaching users wherever they are located."

Enhancing the Online Shopping Journey

For brands striving to optimize online and app shopping experiences, a fundamental shift in design philosophy is necessary: the mobile-first approach. With mobile usage consistently surpassing desktop browsing, especially for fashion and lifestyle content consumed on the go, designing for smaller screens first ensures accessibility and coherence. In fact, the social commerce market is rapidly rising, funneling sales to DTC websites. The market has grown by over $300 billion in the past two years and is expected to reach around $2.9 trillion by 2026 worldwide according to Statista. 

Oh emphasizes the need for designers to prioritize essentials: "streamlined navigation, clear hierarchy, fast load times, and intuitive interactions." While desktop allows for richer animations and immersive moments, these features don't always translate well to mobile. By building from a mobile base, designers guarantee a functional, engaging, and visually consistent experience across all devices, ultimately maintaining brand integrity and strengthening audience reach.

Global Design, Local Nuances: The Case of Gap

Designing user experiences for a global audience presents its unique set of challenges and opportunities. Oh’s work with Gap, where he helped make landing pages for various countries, enforces this principle. Different regions bring their very own cultural distinctions, physical preferences, and product expectations that directly influence their user experience. 

"This means for each region, the interface should carefully balance usability, localization, and brand consistency," Oh explains. While certain elements can be adapted to local needs, others must remain consistent to preserve brand integrity. 

Language, in particular, demands simple UI systems that can accommodate varying text lengths, reading directions, and programmable norms. A well-considered, scalable design system is key for this flexibility while maintaining a proficient visual identity.

Crucially, Oh underscores the indispensable role of user research and testing in this process. It is through these methods that designers can truly understand what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve a design system in ways of cultural and marketable uses. "User research and testing helps designers to understand what works in specific procedures and what doesn’t, and how to move forward with ways to improve a functional design system," Oh explains.

Understanding Consumer Needs: The Research Approach

To gain a deeper insight into online consumer shopping needs, Oh employs a multi-faceted research approach. A straightforward method involves competitive analysis, studying relevant websites to understand excess trends, patterns, and innovations. This helps identify existing successful solutions and pinpoint opportunities for new angles on design issues. Beyond competitive analysis, however, the focus shifts to direct user behavior and necessities. 

This includes conducting user interviews, asking targeted questions about their goals, when visiting a site, their frequency of visits, browsing habits, and what captures their attention. By exploring what frustrates or confuses users, as well as what they enjoy, designers can identify pain points "both in terms of functionality and emotional experience," enabling the creation of more intuitive, engaging, and rewarding digital experiences.

Injecting Playfulness: FabKids and Beyond

Oh's ability to balance strategic design with creative expression was shown in his work at FabKids, where he contributed to brand content for social media, banner ads, and email marketing. He leveraged a bold use of color, dynamic shapes, and lighthearted animation to reflect the brand’s youthful energy.

A key aspect here was recognizing that while the visuals centered on children’s fashion, the true target audience was parents. With this in mind, he prioritized creating designs that show a sense of joy and imagination that would reflect emotionally with parents, sparking nostalgia, excitement, and a connection to their child’s experience of play.

This strategic playfulness ensured content was both engaging and on-brand across various digital outlets.

Avoiding Checkout Pitfalls

Even though minor design flaws can significantly affect the user journey, particularly during the critical checkout process. Oh highlights a common mistake: poor hierarchy and an overwhelming amount of information can create problems in the user interface. 

When details like product dimensions or quantity are presented with equal visual weight, users struggle to quickly process information, leading to confusion, hesitation, and mostly, cart abandonment. A well-designed checkout page, he advises, should guide users efficiently through the process, with a visual description that utilizes essential information—such as total cost and selected items—while minimizing distractions. Clarity and efficiency are the core to a seamless conversion.

Oh stresses that a carefully structured checkout page should serve as a clear and efficient guide for users through the online shopping process. This requires a strong visual communication that focuses on the most essential information: the total cost, the selected items, and clear, unambiguous next steps. At the same time, it is important to minimize any unnecessary distractions that could distract the user's attention. 

By reducing mental load and providing a smoother path, brands can ensure a more streamlined, more confident, and most importantly, a more eased checkout experience, which converts browsing into increased sales.

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