Allergan Aesthetics' loyalty platform had grown into a $100M+ product with 6.4M+ members across consumer web, native apps, and Allē for Business, but the brand expression and information architecture hadn't kept up with the product. The 2024-2025 refresh was the first end-to-end IA and brand reset Allē had attempted in nearly a decade. I led the product design side of the work.
Approach
Research first, then visual. Two-phase IA research with 39 participants (open and closed tree tests, then full-flow prototype tests) to validate a new global navigation before any visual exploration began. A cross-org strategy workshop to anchor the refresh on a clear positioning shift. A new visual system built on top of the existing design system tokens, so engineering didn't have to start over. Brand guidelines authored to outlast the launch.
Manager of Product Design (player-coach), Consumer Tribe
Aug 2024, 2025
Consumer Tribe design, Allergan Brand, Marketing, Tech leadership
Allē consumer web & native, marketing site, brand system
6.4M+ registered members · $100M+ revenue product
Two-phase IA · 39 participants · tree tests + prototype tests
Members described the experience as "functional but cluttered." Providers couldn't tell Allē's pages apart from Allergan's other consumer properties. Internally, every team had a slightly different mental model of what Allē was: a points-and-rewards utility, a prescription portal, a provider directory, a loyalty club. The IA reflected that disagreement.
"The brand is the IA. If three teams disagree about what the product is, the navigation will tell on us."
I authored both research plans and ran the studies with our research partner. Phase I used open and closed tree tests to measure how members actually grouped Allē's content before we showed them anything new. Phase II ran full-flow prototype testing to validate the new IA against real navigation tasks. 39 participants across both phases. The findings ended a months-long internal debate about whether the rebrand should reorganize content. The data said yes.
Anchored on the research, I co-led a strategic alignment workshop with Tech, Brand, and Marketing leadership in August 2024. The workshop that turned a brand refresh into a positioning shift: from a points-and-rewards utility to a connected member experience that lives between the patient and the practice. That positioning is what the design then expressed.
Redesigned the consumer home, the marketing site home, and the global navigation against the new IA. Built it on top of the existing design system tokens so we could ship without engineering rebuilding the foundation, and so the brand expression compounded across every product surface, not just the rebrand pages.
The harder design problem was hierarchy: how to give Allē for Business and Allergan's broader portfolio their own clear places without diluting Allē's identity. The solution was a header system that anchors on Allē's role-based brand tier, with clear paths to the adjacent surfaces.
Authored the new Allē brand guidelines doc, the reference our consumer, provider, and marketing teams now use when they need to know what Allē looks like, sounds like, and shouldn't do. Includes the spot-illustration system I built with our brand team and the motion principles for the refreshed surfaces.
The harder organizational problem at Allē wasn't "what should the brand look like?" It was "how do Tech and Brand work together so this doesn't drift in six months?" I authored the running playbook for how we kick off, review, and approve consumer-facing brand changes, with a creative brief template, a cross-functional review path, and a clear MLRC step. That playbook is what's keeping the refresh consistent past launch.
The visible deliverable was a refreshed home page, marketing site, and brand system. The actual deliverable was a shared answer across Tech, Brand, and Marketing leadership to the question of what Allē is. The IA research gave us the evidence to settle the disagreement; the workshop turned the evidence into a positioning; the design expressed it; the playbook locks it in.
"The refresh shipped because the IA work happened first. Without the research, this would've been three more months of taste arguments."