Lorna Jane PWA

Lead Product Designer
Progressive Web App (PWA)

2024
3 Months

PROJECT
OVERVIEW

Lorna Jane is a leading Australian activewear brand that has redefined the women’s fitness apparel space with a fusion of function, fashion, and philosophy. With a global presence and a loyal community of movement-minded women, the brand is grounded in its empowering ethos: Move. Nourish. Believe.

Before Shipcode, Lorna Jane partnered with Branding Brand on a consulting project to take their customer experience to the next level. Designs for key areas of the experience were designed in Figma and shared with the client—this led to working together as Shipcode's launch partner.

I collaborated with leadership and engineering to define scope and understand functionality gaps so we could track the work in the ambiguity of building our first real experience in Shipcode. I was the only designer on the project and took ownership over every pixel of the experience from start to finish. I worked extremely close with our engineers to ensure functionality and visual design met our UX/UI standards. I was also one of a few members on the team responsible for doing QA in our staging environment as the project reached completion.

ChALLENGES

This project demanded high-level strategic thinking, adaptability, and design leadership under pressure.

Client Changes to Data and Tech Stack Lorna Jane was replatforming from Salesforce to Shopify and working with an external agency. Because of shifting priorities and third-party timelines, we didn’t receive access to key data structures (from Shopify, Nosto, and Radar) until late in the project—compressing design validation into the final stretch.

Unclear Scope & Requirements with Limited ResourcesOur internal team faced tight deadlines with limited capacity and unclear scope. I had to proactively shape requirements in real time—facilitating workshops, proposing design direction, and ensuring alignment across stakeholders despite ambiguity.

Missing Functionality and Context SwitchingShipcode was still maturing and wasn't quite feature complete when we started the project. As the only designer, I had to balance product enhancements while building the Lorna Jane experience—advocating for and helping define critical new features and necessary bug fixes that unblocked the project.

Starting with an Unfinished ConceptThe project kicked off from a loosely defined consulting project that was built in Figma as a conceptual recommendation for key screens and didn't consider the needs of the project as a whole. I created design direction on the fly, drawing from Lorna Jane’s existing branding and web presence to craft a cohesive, elevated UI that would work seamlessly across web and app—without a full-fledged design system to inform decisions.

GOALS &
CONSTRAINTS

Goals

Empower designers and other team members to control the experience without the need for development teams
Seamlessly Integrate with their tech stack
Localized for Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and US
Built with systems in mind (components, styles, logic) that allowed for consistency, efficiency, and reusability
Able to publish real, fully-functional web and app experiences from the same Shipcode project

Constraints

We had a small team with tight timelines
Shipcode wasn't feature complete and we needed to enhance the tool's functionality while building their experience
Balancing visual freedom with technical constraints—like data structures, 3rd party integrations, business logic, and multi-platform/responsive designs

OUTCOMES

Unified Brand Experience for App & Web powered by Shipcode

Faster speed to market for net new work

Increased Autonomy for brand teams like Creative, Marketing, and eCommerce

Enabled Rapid Prototyping & Experimentation

Reduced Developer Cycles/Costs

Improved collaboration between Lorna Jane's Dev, Design, & Stakeholders without needing outside resources

Increased Conversion Rates

Shipcode gave Lorna Jane a competitive edge compared to Industry Standards for delivering customer experiences

I led design trainings teaching Lorna Jane team members how to use Shipcode

Visit the website lornajane.com

KEY
TAKEAWAYS

Empowered Non-Technical Teams to Launch Production-Ready Experiences

We equipped marketing and design teams to visually create and ship native app and web content—no code required. This eliminated bottlenecks between creative and development, and validated the value of design systems and tools built with internal teams in mind.

Accelerated Speed-to-Market

We transformed Lorna Jane’s go-to-market process—what previously took weeks to launch now takes hours. By reducing reliance on engineering, we enabled faster iteration, campaign responsiveness, and creative autonomy across teams. This shift tied design directly to business velocity and reduced operational overhead.

Bridged the Gap Between Design Systems and Real-World Execution

By aligning reusable components with the actual needs of content and marketing workflows, we ensured that the design system wasn’t just scalable—it was usable. This strengthened the relationship between product design and brand execution, empowering the business to ship faster without compromising quality.

REFLECTION

Building a product with the product

Designing a PWA with the Tool We Created

Designing Lorna Jane’s PWA using the very platform we’ve been building—Shipcode—was a full-circle moment in product design. It challenged me to step beyond user empathy into true user embodiment. Every decision impacted both the final user experience and the capabilities of our tool. This project sharpened my ability to design flexible systems, surface edge cases early, and identify friction within our own workflows. It was a powerful validation of our product’s value—and a defining experience in designing not just with a tool, but for it.