Floyd

Overview

Floyd is a digitally native furniture brand built around a simple idea: modular, repairable furniture that evolves with your life instead of ending up in a landfill. The products are well-designed and thoughtfully made, but the website wasn't keeping up.

I joined as Senior Product Designer for a one-year engagement to redesign Floyd's entire e-commerce experience. The catalog had grown in complexity, the mobile experience was fragile, and the brand's values (sustainability, modularity, longevity) weren't coming through in the interface. The redesign had to fix the usability problems and tell a better story at the same time.

The Strategic Frame

Floyd's products are systems, not objects. The website was treating them like objects.

The core insight came from mapping Floyd's product ecosystem early in the engagement. A Floyd shelving unit isn't a single SKU—it's a starting point. Users buy components, expand configurations, add pieces over time. The existing product pages couldn't represent that. They showed options without communicating how those options related to each other, or how a purchase today could grow into something larger later.

Getting that right was the thread that ran through every decision in the redesign.

Problem 1 — Product pages couldn't handle modular complexity

Customers couldn't visualize what they were buying, or how it could evolve.

Configuration options existed but felt flat, think a list of variants without context. For a Shelving System with multiple size combinations, material choices, and color options, that wasn't enough. Users needed to understand what they were configuring, not just which option to pick.

The redesigned product pages introduced structured configuration flows: size first, then combination layout, then material and color. Each step narrowed the decision space and built toward a clear, visualizable outcome. The goal is to make the modular logic of the product legible and not just functional.

Problem 2 — Navigation didn't reflect how people actually shop for furniture

Users browse by room, by system, by how things fit together. The old nav didn't support any of that.

Working with the lead designer, PM and founders, I redesigned the site's information architecture to organize products as systems rather than isolated items. The new structure surfaced bundles, add-ons, and related components in context—reinforcing the idea that Floyd furniture grows with you, rather than presenting every product as a standalone purchase.

Problem 3 — Mobile was an afterthought

A significant portion of Floyd's traffic was on mobile. The experience wasn't built for it.

Configuration interfaces, image galleries, and checkout interactions had all been designed for desktop and adapted down. I rebuilt these flows mobile-first, treating smaller screens as the primary constraint rather than an edge case. Particularly for product configuration and gallery browsing—two interactions that define the purchase experience—the redesign made these feel native to the device rather than squeezed into it.

Problem 4 — The brand's values weren't visible in the interface

Floyd's mission of being modular, sustainable and repairable was not coming through in the shopping experience.

The redesign introduced editorial-style pages around Floyd's design philosophy and sustainability goals. Modularity, material longevity, repairability, sustainable production—these weren't just marketing copy. Weaving them into the product experience gave customers context for why Floyd furniture costs what it costs and lasts as long as it does.

I also developed a visual design system—typography hierarchy, color usage, gallery layouts, component presentation—that gave the site a coherent, considered identity to match the products themselves.

Impact

The redesigned Floyd website launched in March 2021.

The new experience improved product discoverability, made modular configuration legible for the first time, brought the mobile experience up to par with desktop, and gave the brand a digital identity that matched the quality of the physical products. The visual system established patterns that could scale as the catalog continued to grow.

Reflection

E-commerce for complex, configurable products is a harder design problem than it looks. The temptation is to surface every option, however, comprehension comes from sequence, not completeness. The most important design decision on this project was figuring out what to show users first, and what to hold back until they needed it.