How do you change a company's direction with one prototype?

The starting point

Spreadshirt was running on an assumption that felt obviously right at the top: shop owners want speed. The leadership vision was a 60-second journey, pick a template, let it customise itself, ship. Efficient, scalable, clean.

The company had tried to redesign the seller experience twice before, and failed both times. I was brought in to lead the third attempt. I started with one question: what if the assumption was wrong?

Making the research undeniable

The data said one thing and executive intuition said another, and two earlier attempts had already failed. A presentation was not going to move that.

So I built a prototype: a mobile version of the t-shirt designer, put directly into users' hands. The point was not to prove mobile was technically possible. It was to show that the design experience itself was worth keeping, that it held up, and still felt good, even on a small screen.

What changed

The mobile prototype tested well: it showed the design experience could work on a small screen. The larger result was strategic: leadership changed the product approach from full automation to controlled automation. The redesign that had failed twice was finished, over nine months, scaling from a team of three into larger implementation teams.

Product strategy: A 60-second fully automated journey: design friction removed Controlled automation: user agency and creative control kept
The redesign project: Two previous attempts had failed Completed over nine months; the team grew from three into full implementation teams
Executive buy-in: Leadership backed a direction that contradicted their own original intuition

Want to hear more?

Curious how a one-week Axure prototype moved leadership where two previous redesign attempts had already failed, or why the fix for an automation-first strategy turned out to be less automation, not more?

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