Account Personalization

Rent the Runway • Dec-feb 2026 • Lead product designer

Project Overview

CONTEXT

Rent the Runway (RTR) is strongly associated with special occasions, but the browsing experience emphasized everyday apparel to promote subscriptions. This created a disconnect for prospective customers seeking eventwear, making it harder to quickly find relevant inventory and build intent to transact.

uSER Challenges

Business Challenges

Prospective customers struggled to find relevant inventory when arriving on-site expecting to rent for a specific occasion. Key challenges included:

Users couldn’t easily find inventory relevant to their specific occasion or use-case when browsing the site.
Users were confused by everyday-focused messaging and overwhelmed by informational components while trying to explore rental options.

Rent the Runway was seeing low conversion rates from prospective customers. Performance data showed that users converted significantly more when they were shown inventory tailored to specific use-cases, but limitations in personalization and search made it difficult to surface relevant items early in the browsing experience.

OUTCOMES

+ 62% Prospect Account Creation Rate

New entry points to account creation encouraged users to create an account before transacting.

+26% MVP Conversion Lift

The personalized MVP experience yielded a 26% lift in new customer conversion compared to the control.

Skip to Final Designs

DESIGN CHALLENGE

How might Rent the Runway quickly guide prospective customers toward relevant inventory that fits their preferences and needs?

Design Process

1 | Initial Exploration

WIREFRAMING

PROCESS

I explored different UI elements to facilitate collection of user data and reduce friction in the discovery funnel.

mEMBER PARITY

Quick quizzes

Browsing-led

a/b tESTING

2 | MVP Browse-led A/B Test

Product Strategy

App new user home was inventory focused and converted 3x better than web, so we tested whether a browse-led home page would convert better than the informational home page on web.

Constraints

We A/B tested conversion with an MVP browse-led new user home which leveraged existing personalized carousel components from the member experience.

Significant technical lift to build implicit recommendations
Stakeholder concerns about removing informational content for new users

a/b tEST

Key Learnings

+0.4% increase in conversion vs. control.
Even with low levels of personalization, surfacing inventory earlier yielded small conversion improvements in the treatment group.

CONTROL: New user home

variant: Browsing-led MVP

PROTOTYPING • Moderated User rESEARCH

3 | UX Research

gOALS

The purpose of this research was to understand the motivations, expectations, and preferences prospective users have when creating an account.

Methodology

I conducted 10 moderated user interviews evaluating the current home page, a logged-in non-subscriber experience, and future home page concepts focused on discovery and personalization.

Key Learnings

90% of participants preferred the browse-led experience.
Participants expected personalization as a result of creating an account.
Prospects prioritize inventory discovery over logistics and most users found detailed mechanics distracting if they didn’t find an item that fit their needs.
While a search bar is a foundational utility for specific items, most users prefer a guided discovery that provides inspiration through interactive browse components.

mvp

Browse-led

rENTAL-METHOD LED

Final Design

Phase 1 Launch

The first release introduced a browse center designed to surface inventory earlier and capture lightweight preference signals. The experience featured a prominent search bar, browse tiles organized by occasions and categories, and style swipes to gather preference data while browsing.

Prospect hearting increased 64% compared to the control.
Conversion increased 22% for users exposed to the browse center.
Diversified browse pathways improved engagement beyond dress-focused discovery.

Desktop

Account Creation Drivers

Mobile Web

We introduced new entry points which encouraged users to create an account to unlock the personalized new-user home experience. These initiatives resulted in a +62% increase in prospect account creation rate.

Future iterations will expand personalization and discovery:

Work with BI team to cluster user affinities and test into dynamic browse tiles until implicit recommendations are available.
Expand visual browsing based on strong engagement with style swipes (82%).
Test into a two-step onboarding flow to improve initial browse relevance.
Add quick quizzes throughout browsing to refine recommendations. ✨