Socks Cushioning Guide (Smartwool)
ROle
Senior UX Manager,
VF Corporation
Objective
With hundreds of sock options available on Smartwool’s site, users were overwhelmed by choice—and unsure what to buy. Our goal was to create an engaging, educational experience that would guide customers to the right performance sock for their needs, boosting conversion and reinforcing Smartwool’s reputation as sock experts and trusted advisors in outdoor comfort.
TEAM
Germaine Irwin | UX Researcher
Kait O'Malley | UX Designer
Insights
→ Defined clear product tiers (Zero, Light, Full) to guide customers toward the right fit—reducing choice paralysis and improving conversion.
→ Maintained visual consistency aligned with Smartwool’s brand system, reinforcing trust and recognizability.
→ Created a scalable format that can be reused across other product education tools and categories.
How do you turn overwhelming product variety into confident decision-making—especially on mobile?
As Senior Manager of UX, I created space for research, strategy, and UI to converge in the form of the Smartwool Sock Finder—a guided digital experience built to simplify choice and build shopper confidence. With hundreds of similar-looking products and layers of technical jargon, customers often felt overwhelmed and unsure of what to buy. Our solution: a lightweight, intuitive tool that helped users quickly find the right performance sock based on their needs—positioning Smartwool not just as a retailer, but as a trusted expert in socks built for every adventure.
THE CHALLENGE
Smartwool’s product catalog is deep, technical, and highly seasonal—but users didn’t understand the differences between socks or how to choose the right one for their activity, warmth level, or layering system.
Our research revealed
• Users often abandoned their shopping journey due to choice paralysis
• Many defaulted to bestsellers or nothing at all, skipping exploration entirely
• Product pages weren’t doing enough to educate or inspire confident decisions
• People often confused cushion with warmth
We needed to create a solution that:
• Simplified a complex product offering into an intuitive digital experience
• Boosted user confidence and education, especially on mobile
• Reflected Smartwool’s tone, trust, and technical performance
DISCOVERY & RESEARCH
Our UX process is rooted in a clear research and design collaboration cycle: Discover, Explore, Test, and Listen. This approach included 32 interviews across multiple phases to understand user behavior and validate prototypes across mobile and desktop.
Phase 1: MODERATED INTERVIEWS
Our team chose to start the project off with a round of moderated interviews due to the fact that sock cushioning information was sparse and inconsistent across sock retailers. We wanted to talk to the users, intervene if participants get stuck, ask for clarification, and observe body language and facial expressions to gain a richer understanding of the user experience
Interview results—competitive analysis
I collaborated with brand stakeholders to identify competitors offering some level of sock cushioning education on their websites.
UX BEst Practices—Landing Pages
At the start of any new project, it’s essential for the UX team to ground their work in current best practices and evidence-based insights from the field of user experience. By combining industry standards with targeted usability testing and user interviews, we ensure our recommendations are both strategic and actionable. This approach enables the team to deliver best-in-class solutions that are not only informed by user behavior and needs, but also supported by research and proven UX methodologies.
phase 2: Design Exploration
Through the use of NPS Feedback we learned that there had been user questions around sock cushion, misunderstanding of what cushion is best for their use and returns data helped us understand that the information on the web today was not the most helpful for the user.
user interviews and testing
While the design was underway, we implemented a hybrid methodology that combined both moderated and unmoderated user interviews. This mixed-method approach allowed us to capture both attitudinal and behavioral insights. Moderated sessions enabled us to probe more deeply into participants’ perceptions, expectations, and decision-making processes as they interacted with our design concepts. In parallel, unmoderated interviews offered a window into natural user behavior by allowing participants to engage with the prototypes independently—without facilitator guidance or bias. This dual approach helped us validate usability patterns, identify friction points, and better understand how users interpreted content and navigational elements across contexts.
Interview results—consumer rights
Moderated and Unmoderative interviews & testing revealed what users found valuable—like the inside-out sock graphic and cushion level infographic—and what caused friction, such as excessive scrolling and off-topic content around sustainability.
Research-driven design
When research and design teams collaborate throughout the process, insights from users can immediately inform design decisions—and emerging design ideas can, in turn, shape what questions need to be explored further.
The final recommended design
The final design demonstrates a well-researched, user-informed UX design process that led to a clear, accessible, and visually engaging educational experience for customers shopping for cushioned socks. By combining qualitative research with iterative design, the team crafted a guide that’s informative without being overwhelming.
Why It Mattered
This project turned a common friction point—too many choices—into an opportunity to educate and convert. By simplifying the decision-making process through guided UX and smart constraints, we helped more customers find the right sock, faster—positioning Smartwool not just as a brand, but as a trusted expert in performance socks.