We performed an expert review on Threadless’ existing websites, focusing on the site’s navigation and wayfinding, search and search results, and checkout funnel.

We used the findings from the expert review to create a high-level list of recommendations and inform our wireframes later in the project.

Once we were familiar with what we were going to be working on, we needed to know who we would be designing for and the context they would be using the site.

We created a set of personas and scenarios that represented typical Threadless customers, contributors, and purchasers to fulfill this need. We used these personas and scenarios to allow us to successfully role play with the Threadless team when walking through the proposed interfaces.

We were tasked with creating a better user experience for Threadless customers, so we figured we should talk to actual users to hear about what they wanted see on the site.

With pizzas in hand, we spent a couple hours talking with actual Threadless customers and contributors about how they would change the site, and even had them design a couple of screens. We used their ideas throughout the rest of the project.

We knew who we were designing for, the context they would be using the site in, and what they thought was missing or unnecessary. It was finally time to design.

We took all of the information we had gathered previously and put some ideas onto paper. We worked with the Threadless team to refine our first drafts into a single suggestion for how they could help clients find what they were looking for and get through the checkout process easily.