Swadesh Store - From Vision to Launch
• Context
INTRODUCTION
Swadesh: Where India’s Craft Stories Come Alive
Swadesh is Reliance Foundation's artisan-first retail initiative to preserve and promote India’s arts and crafts.
Flagship stores in Hyderabad and Mumbai, offer handcrafted luxury products - from apparel to furniture, highlighting India’s rich cultural heritage.
Our design team at Jio built its online presence from the ground up, creating a digital identity and e-commerce experience
BUSINESS GOAL
Crafting the perception of luxury
USER GOAL
Shop heritage with trust and confidence
EXPERIENCE GOAL
Highlighting crafts, celebrating makers
MY ROLE
Purchase Funnel: Bringing the vision to life on the Product Page
Product detail page (PDP) is where customers learn more about a specific handcrafted item. Key actions on the PDP include:
⟡ Explore images
⟡ Reading details
⟡ Choose among variants
⟡ Add to cart
• Problem
THE CHALLENGE
One Brand. Many Crafts. Zero Templates.
Justifying premium pricing through trust, story, and thoughtful UX.
Designing without precedent - no customer base, limited research, and hypothesis-driven personas.
Building from zero - defining the brand’s digital voice, structure, and experience within tight time and tech constraints.
Unifying a diverse catalogue meant having to craft a consistently scalable experience across vibrant SKUs, regions, and product types under one cohesive brand.
THE RESEARCH
Aligning on Swadesh's DNA cross-functionally when time, tech, and budget were tight
Competitive research, workshopping with product managers, offline store visit, user interviews with HNI art patrons was utilised to come up with the following key design principles:
Early workshops with stakeholders helped align on the vision
Design for emotional connection
Users seek emotional connection and cultural meaning. Surface the maker’s story, process, and heritage through layered, authentic storytelling that deepens appreciation.
Products take the center stage
Users rely on visual detail to assess value. Design must foreground rich, high-quality imagery and remove distractions - letting the product’s craftsmanship speak for itself
Trust earned through clarity & care
Users rely on visual detail to assess value. Design must foreground rich, high-quality imagery and remove distractions - letting the product’s craftsmanship speak for itself
• FINAL DESIGN HIGHLIGHTS
• Design Process
WIREFRAMES FOR PDP
Early iterations to align on the structure
→ Product Images, Name, Description
→ Variants and Add to cart
→ Specifications and highlights
→ Details like returns, delivery information, care instructions
→ Craft information
→ Artist details
→ Certifications and tags
→ AR fitment
→ Customisation
→ Recommendations/ Similar items
SCROLL BEHAVIOUR
Scrolly-telling Meaningfully
Scrolling interactions were defined to create a purposefully guided and immersive experience that felt unique and prioritised product visuals, keeping the information decluttered for a minimal, premium aesthetic
REFINING THE SCROLL
This Introduced The Problem Of Visibility
The product details were important but not visible upfront as they were hidden beneath the image scroll:
→ How do we tell a story without telling it all at once?
PROTOTYPE ITERATIONS
Rethinking how detail is revealed - surfacing it early while maintaining a decluttered first fold
Details in a side drawer
✔ Details are most upfront
✔ Can see the image with the information
✔ No change needed in mobile (inconsistent)
✘ Crowded first fold
✘ Limits ability to add more accordion headers in future
Expandable on click
✔ Surfaces details early on
✔ Does not distract from primary product information
✘ Expanded state still looks crowded
✘ Limits ability to add more accordion headers in future
Split Scroll behaviour
When scrolling with the mouse over left panel with images, images would scroll. When scrolling with mouse over right panel with information, page scrolls down
✔ User has more choice in this pattern
✔ Requires minimal change from current design (carousel & scroll behaviour)/ low effort
✔ No change needed in mobile
✘ May not be intuitive to some users (confirmed in testing)
✘ May have a learning curve
✘ Information cannot be read along with image
3/3 Participants in a guerrilla testing didn't realise this pattern at first and would not have discovered it without a nudge.
THE PROBLEM
When products lacked certifications, the PDP felt flat and unconvincing
Section meant for certifications was not always populated with tags
Many products lacked formal authenticity markers
Resulted in inconsistent UI
Lost opportunity to build trust and aid purchase decisions
UX Strategy to make it work
I mapped gaps with stakeholders, building a scalable UX framework to bridge certification gaps with promise-based trust cues
I collaborated with category heads, content writers, and product managers to:
Audit how many certifications typically existed per category (minimum, maximum, average)
Understand legal, sourcing, and logistical reasons for missing data
Identify adjacent cues that users cared about (e.g. sustainability, delivery experience)
Come up with a rule-based logic to fill the gaps meaningfully
RSULT: FROM EMPTY TO ESSENTIAL
Identifying at least two trust markers for every category helped turn an empty state space into a trust-building moment on the PDP
CUSTOMISATION
Blue-Sky Beginnings
I explored what could be and designed without limits to imagine what's possible
Started with an open-ended explorations, crafting early prototypes that imagined the future of customisation on Swadesh - unconstrained by tech or inventory logic
Served as a strategic tools facilitate conversations with PMs and category heads about the vision when there was no playbook or PRD to start with
STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT
Collaborated with PMs to define what 'Customisation' might mean for a Swadesh buyer
→ Ultimately, from the business and operations perspective ‘customisation’ is just a variant (colour/ dimension/ style etc.) of a base SKU that is not currently in stock but can be made to order on request by shoppers.
RTS → Ready To Ship; MTO → Made to Order; ATC → Add to Cart; PDP → Product Detail Page
USE CASE 1
Under 3 variable parameters to choose from
Usual product detail page with variants selectable through the side drawer interaction
→ MADE-TO-ORDER called out on PDP if the conditions apply on a certain SKU
USE CASE 2
3 or more variable parameters to choose from
An immersive real-time exploratory view to visualise different combinations of variants
→ MADE-TO-ORDER called out on PDP if the conditions apply on a certain SKU
Developer Hand-off file with all scenarios and end-to-end journey
• Impact
LIVE AND OUT IN THE WORLD
Proved Purchase Viability Despite High Price Points
• Learnings
LEARNINGS
Key Takeaways
⟡ Luxury is in restraint
⟡ Visuals carry emotion but structure carries confidence, treading the balance of UI craft with UX simplicity became vital
⟡ Constraints can sharpen creativity
