KIX Mall

Challenge The brief looked simple on paper: build a shopping app. In practice it wasn't one problem but several stacked on top of each other. Shops that already had their own online and physical presence. Inventory living across systems that didn't talk to each other. A brand identity for KIX that had to sit inside dozens of different retailers' own visual worlds, on a small screen, and feel coherent whether the retailer sold fashion or hardware. And underneath all of it, the real question: how do you make this feel like more than a loyalty scheme with a shopping cart bolted on. Solution Every conversation with a potential client started the same way: does this still feel like us? Brands weren't worried about integration, they were worried about disappearing into someone else's system. What excited them was newer ground: features they didn't have, direct access to KIX's user base, reach without building the infrastructure themselves. A plain, templated shop wouldn't close deals. Clients needed something unmistakably KIX, but flexible enough to hold their own identity too. We started small: a single painter in Stockholm, selling live at a real event. From there, the thinking sharpened into tiers, small, medium, large, each with its own reason to say yes: a gamified push for a seasonal sale with Arkivet, a wishlist feature for Cervera. But the tier that made the most sense to start with wasn't a merchant at all. NGOs, like a church running on donations, had the clearest motivation: no marketing budget, real pressure to cut costs, a direct line to their community. Building for tier zero grew the user base and proved the format at the same time. KIX Mall, a.k.a. Explore, is still an active, ongoing build, and one of KIX's clearest differentiators. Nobody builds a super app in a day, the version worth building first is the one that earns trust, one real client at a time. My role: Head of Design – product strategy, UX, interaction design, visual design, stakeholder management, and concept development.