Daniel Slowacek, based in Vienna, Austria, has a background in computer science and has worked in UX leadership roles across industries such as online gambling and sports apps before joining refurbed, a marketplace for refurbished products. At refurbed, Daniel leads a UX design team focusing on the consumer-facing marketplace, particularly the pre-purchase journey.
Some Key Takeaways:
Refurbed’s marketplace spans various product categories, each requiring tailored UX solutions. While selling iPhones is highly optimized, categories like washing machines or sporting goods present unique complexities, such as condition descriptions and buyer expectations.
Refurbed has a robust experimentation culture that heavily relies on A/B testing to validate design changes. The team also uses qualitative research methods like user interviews to uncover deeper insights about user behavior, especially when quantitative data doesn't fully explain the issues.
One major focus is simplifying the buyer's journey, particularly in understanding and managing relationships between consumers and merchants. Daniel’s team experiments with ways to clearly communicate the role of merchants without overwhelming or confusing users.
Expanding into new categories like sporting goods requires balancing scalability with category-specific needs, such as hygiene concerns in the sporting goods category.
Daniel is keenly interested in organizational design within UX and experimentation. He observes a growing push for "unicorn" roles—professionals who combine UX, analytics, and research—which he views as potentially unsustainable.
Where to find Daniel Slowacek:
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Daniel and refurbed
(02:49) Daniel's Role and UX at refurbed
(04:32) User Experience, Design and Organizational Challenges
(10:25) Research and Experimentation at refurbed
(15:58) refurbed's Approach to Removing Friction from Customer Journey
(24:19) Scaling and Experimenting with New Product Categories
(30:51) Current Projects and Research Initiatives
(33:37) Daniel's Observations in the Market and Org Design
(35:57) Resources and Final Thoughts
Referenced:
An easy-to-digest list of design and psychological principles: https://lawsofux.com/
One of the most popular UX websites filled with articles, videos, and training materials: https://www.nngroup.com/
Validating Product Ideas by Tomer Sharon: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/lean-user-research/
Finding Our Way, a podcast about navigating opportunities and challenges of design leadership by Jesse James Garrett and Peter Merholz:
Refurbed website: https://www.refurbed.de/
📅 Upcoming Interviews
Product Experimentation at Verizon
Personalization with Joshua Mabry
Product Experimentation at Lucid.co
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About the Author
I’m Brian Poe, Founder and Chief Optimization Officer of Mammoth Insights, where we specialize in helping companies enhance their digital strategies through Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and experimentation. With over 15 years of personal experience in the marketing industry, we have a deep passion for uncovering hidden opportunities in data to drive significant improvements in overall business performance. At Mammoth Insights, we offer affordable CRO services, including quant/qual research, market analysis, UX and copy research, A/B testing, and more, tailored specifically for mid-sized to enterprise companies. Our mission is to make complex CRO concepts easy to understand and implement at an affordable price without sacrificing expertise or quality.
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