Finally, after over year since the initial design was completed, Crate & Barrel has re-launched.

Previous design

Live now

Some Background

• As an Associate Interaction Architect during my time at Blast Radius the team I worked with on Crate included John Fairley (Lead Interaction Architect), Jeremy Bell (Creative Director) and the incomparable Sam Dallyn (Art DIrection) and Brendan Lynch (Lead Interface Developer).
• Together we worked with some very enthusiastic and creative folks from Crate & Barrel including recent Senior Art Director Jamie Dihiansan, who’s now Lead Designer at 37 Signals
• The big problem was that the initial site was incredibly well done from a usability perspective. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by working on projects that have such terrible sites to begin with, but this was the first time I really felt challenged trying to improve what existed. 
• The critical design eye and deep care for usability the team at Crate & Barrel had were present throughout the planning, design and development process. At times that pressure made seemingly simple design choices painstaking but I believe overall it produced diamonds instead of busting pipes

In all honesty, not everything we initially designed made it live but what did make it was exceptionally executed from the dev team and still puts Crate above par with their counterparts. The new design is not going to shake up e-commerce design but I believe the humble little housewares store that opened in Illinois over 40 years ago would’ve never intended it to.