Why online shop owners wanted design control before speed

Interviews changed the strategy; a prototype opened mobile

The setting: Spreadshirt, a print-on-demand platform serving about 5,000 business users and hundreds of thousands of consumers. Shop owners create and sell custom products through its design tools.
My part: UX Strategy Lead, 2014 to 2016, working inside a product triad. I led the nine-month seller-experience redesign, conducted the shop-owner interviews and the executive workshops, and led the mobile prototype of the t-shirt designer.
What changed: The product strategy moved from full automation to controlled automation that keeps design control with the shop owner. The redesign was completed after two earlier failed attempts. The mobile prototype drew resoundingly positive user feedback and moved to production implementation.
Three takeaways: Write down the user belief your roadmap depends on, and test it. Ask users what a step means to them before you automate it. Settle a feasibility doubt with a prototype people can use.

Two failed redesigns, and a vision of a shop in 60 seconds

Spreadshirt had tried to redesign the seller experience, setting up your own online shop, twice before. Both attempts had failed. I led the third, a nine-month project that started with three people: a project lead, a freelance designer and a user researcher.

A vision already sat at the top of it. Leadership assumed shop owners wanted a “60-second automated journey.”

A belief about users can steer a roadmap untested

Most roadmaps rest on a belief about what users value. It sounds like knowledge, so it rarely gets checked, and it decides what gets built.

Spreadshirt's belief was speed. The interviews tested it.

Shop owners said the design was the part they valued

I interviewed shop owners in person. They described the design process as the most uplifting experience. They valued design control over speed and automation.

The vision promised speed. Shop owners valued control. That finding changed executive assumptions.

The strategy moved to controlled automation

I ran workshops with the executive team and business-unit leadership. The direction based on the research findings went against leadership's intuition, and it secured executive buy-in: controlled automation that preserves the shop owner's design control.

The team grew from three people into larger implementation teams once the individual parts were defined. The seller-experience work was A/B tested against the existing app, and the redesign the company had attempted twice was completed.

Could the full t-shirt designer work on a phone?

Desktop-first was the company norm. A second question: could the entire desktop t-shirt designer feature set be adapted for a mobile interface?

I answered it with a research prototype. Over one intensive week, with a UI designer, we built a mobile t-shirt designer in Axure RP, made to draw out user feedback. User testing showed the desktop functionality could be made available on mobile, and the feedback was resoundingly positive.

The prototype moved to production implementation. Its success contributed to a company-wide shift in mobile strategy.

Controlled automation, a finished redesign, and a designer on mobile

Two outcomes, from two pieces of work. The interviews influenced the strategy shift and won executive buy-in for a direction that ran against leadership's intuition. The prototype answered a feasibility question, and its success influenced the company's mobile priorities.

A line from fully automated to full manual control. Management's vision, the 60-second shop, sits near the automated end; what shop owners valued, the design process they called the most uplifting experience, sits near the manual end. Where the product landed is marked between them, closer to user control. — Fig. 01
Between the vision and what shop owners valued: automation that keeps design control with the owner.

Product strategy: A fully automated 60-second shop Controlled automation that keeps design control with the shop owner
The redesign: Two earlier attempts that failed Completed over nine months
Mobile: Desktop-first design tools Mobile prototype moved to production implementation

The design stayed in the shop owner's hands

The 60-second shop is not what came out of the third attempt. What came out was a balanced approach: automation on offer, with design control kept by the shop owner.

Testing the belief a roadmap rests on

Write down the user belief your roadmap depends on, and test it.

Name who last put it in front of the people it describes. If nobody has, that is the first research question for the next planning round.
Ask users what a step means to them before you automate it.

Usage data tells you a step takes time. Only the people doing it can tell you whether it is the part they came for.
Settle a feasibility doubt with a prototype people can use.

Build the smallest version that runs the real tasks on the new surface and put it in front of users. Here, one intensive week was enough.

Some steps users just want finished

Data entry, compliance forms, the admin around a job people chose for other reasons: automate those, and quickly. Nobody has ever described a tax form as uplifting. The lesson here applies where the step itself is part of what users value, and interviews are how you find out which kind you have.

Want to hear more?

Name the belief about your users that your roadmap rests on, the way the 60-second shop was Spreadshirt's, and the capability you assume would never work on a phone. Those are the two questions I'd put in front of users first.

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