Senior Product Design Leader | Complex Platforms & Workflows
Case Study
LoveCrafts (formerly Loveknitting) | Product Design Director (Consulting) | 2015
Designing the social and community layer for a fast-growing crafting
e-commerce platform - and directing the visual redesign that supported a £20m Series B.
Key Results
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New platform launched mid-2015, serving customers across 100+ countries
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Site visits increased 50% year on year following launch
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Named one of the fastest-growing startups, Sunday Times Start-up Track 15, 2015
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£20m Series B raised November 2015, bringing total funding to £30m
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3rd place, Best Website, British Knitting Awards 2015
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Design team hired and led across e-commerce, social, and mobile verticals
Project Overview
Role
Head of Product Design, embedded consultant
My Team
1 visual designer, 3 UX designers - aligned across e-commerce, social, and mobile
The Challenge
LoveKnitting had outgrown its legacy Magento e-commerce platform and was making the leap to a bespoke framework - while simultaneously adding a social and community layer to what had been a pure e-commerce product. I was brought in to lead UX and visual design across all three workstreams concurrently
Tools & Methods
Sketch · Axure · InVision · User Stories · Responsive Web Design · Agile Delivery
My Process
1. Establishing the Design Approach
A significant portion of the product scope had already been defined in user stories before I joined. Working in sync with the product managers and CTO, I defined a design schedule that would allow the team to deliver the UX solution to development quickly and efficiently - without sacrificing quality - within their established agile methodology.
2. Aligning the Team
I structured the team across the three parallel workstreams - a UX designer each for e-commerce, social, and mobile, with the visual designer working across all three. The team worked collaboratively with developers, presenting at daily UX stand-ups and reviewing output regularly to maintain pace and quality.
3. UX Design
Juggling multiple objectives across three workstreams simultaneously required rigorous documentation. Design work was collated in themed epics covering user flows, high-fidelity wireframes, interaction specifications, and the full responsive solution - comprehensive enough to give the development team everything they needed without ambiguity.
User flows, Interface designs, taxonomy, interaction specification and resposive web mark up examples from the UX handover
3. Visual Design
Working with the business owners and development team, I directed the visual redesign - defining goals and parameters for a more contemporary look and feel deliverable within the existing framework constraints. The visual design was delivered in tandem with UX, as a guidelines document applied directly to the high-fidelity wireframes.
Outcome
The new LoveKnitting platform launched mid-2015, serving customers across more than 100 countries. Site visits grew 50% year on year, the company secured a further £20m in Series B funding shortly after launch, and the site won recognition at the British Knitting Awards - strong validation for a company less than three years old in a competitive market. The company was named in the Sunday Times Start-up Track 15 the same year, recognising it as one of the fastest-growing startups in the UK.