Designing for real decisions by building trust in the Brooks Bra Finder Quiz through research and redesign.
Overview
Helping customers choose the right product isn’t just about recommendations — it’s about trust.
This work spanned multiple phases, starting with in-store behavioral research and continuing through a later product redesign. Together, it focused on understanding how people make decisions in context and translating those insights into a clearer, more trustworthy product experience.
Context
The Bra Finder Quiz was designed to help runners find the right sports bra based on fit, support, and activity.
While it performed well online, there were two underlying challenges:
In-store, customers often struggled to navigate options independently
In the product itself, recommendations weren’t always clearly understood or trusted
The opportunity was to better align the experience with how customers actually make decisions — not just how the system generated results.
Role
I led research and experience direction across two key phases:
2022: In-store and usability research to understand behavior and identify breakdowns
2025: Translating those insights into product improvements during a replatform effort
Define
Understanding decisions in context (2022)
We started by studying how customers shop for bras in real-world retail environments.
Through surveys, shop-alongs, and an 8-week field test, a few patterns stood out:
Customers preferred to shop independently and avoid asking for help
Confidence came from tactile interaction and familiarity
Speed and simplicity were critical to the experience
When the quiz was introduced in-store via QR code:
It influenced what customers tried on and purchased
It was valued as a self-service tool
But trust broke down when results didn’t clearly reflect user input
This clarified the problem:
The issue wasn’t just usability — it was a lack of transparency and trust in the recommendation logic.
Design
Reframing the experience around trust (2025)
During the replatform effort, these insights became the foundation for redesigning the experience.
Key changes focused on:
Using clearer, more natural language aligned with how customers describe fit and support
Simplifying the flow to reduce interruptions and cognitive load
Reworking results to explain why each product was recommended
The goal was to make the system’s logic visible — so users could understand and trust the outcome.
Build
Updating the system to support better decisions
Beyond the interface, the underlying system was updated to better reflect real-world needs:
Recommendation logic aligned with current product offerings
Greater flexibility to evolve as products and preferences change
Visual and structural updates designed for longevity
This created a more reliable connection between user input and product output.
Outcome
The updated experience improved how customers understood and interacted with recommendations:
Clearer connection between inputs and results
Increased trust in the recommendations
Greater alignment between suggested products and customer expectations
In-store testing also showed that when introduced at the right moment, the tool could influence both behavior and purchase decisions.
Reflection
This work reinforced that trust isn’t built through more features — it’s built through clarity.
By grounding the experience in real-world behavior and making the system easier to understand, the product became a tool customers could rely on, not just use.