Shower Door Selector
The Shower Door Selection tool provides clear guidance and education, helping customers confidently choose the right size, style, and price for their space.
MY ROLE
TEAM
TIMELINE
Senior Product Designer
Content Designer​
Defined the initial configurator hypothesis and direction
Ran usability testing that surfaced PDP preference
Navigated the drop-ship SKU constraint
Designed all three direction explorations
Presented the final Guided Tabs design to stakeholders
Researcher
Product Manager
Engineering
3 Months
1 Quarter
Discovery
Design & Testing
Engineering Handoff
Data Science
The Outcome
The Guided Shower Tabs experience improved decision confidence within one of the most complex categories in the home improvement journey. The initiative is projected to generate:
$15M
In Revenue
+18-24%
Projected Increase in Engagement
12-16%
Projected Reduction in Abandonment Rate
The Problem
Shopping for a shower door online is one of the highest-friction decisions in the home improvement journey. Customers are asked to make precise choices, layout, measurements, opening type and often without confidence that they’re choosing correctly.

The goal of the Shower Door Selector was to reduce anxiety and help customers confidently find a door that would work in their space, while also respecting the realities of e-commerce fulfillment.
Early Direction: A Configurator Assumption
Our initial hypothesis was that customers needed a configurator-style experience to guide them step-by-step through the decision.
To test this, we explored two directions:

-
A multi-step guided configurator.
-
A PDP-based configurator that updated imagery and pricing in real time.
What Usability 
Testing Revealed
Usability testing quickly surfaced a key insight:

​
-
Customers strongly preferred the PDP-based experience.
-
Customers preferred control over progression.
-
Seeing the product image update as they made selections.
-
Watching price change in real time.
-
Collapsible accordions that revealed progress without forcing steps.
-
Inline education (e.g., “help me measure” tooltips).
-
Step-based flows felt slow and restrictive.
-
PDP configurators created strong confidence, but implied a level of customization the backend couldn’t support.
The Core Constraint Emerges
However, a deeper issue surfaced as we aligned with business and engineering.

Shower doors are drop-ship, fixed SKUs, not truly configurable products.

This meant:

-
Availability, assortment, and fulfillment logic could break on PDPs.
-
The experience risked implying customization the system couldn’t support.
-
The most usable solution conflicted with backend realities.
-
This created the central tension of the project:
- ​The experience customers preferred was not the experience the system could reliably support.
Iteration Phase: Exploring Guidance Models
Based on learnings from testing and constraints, we shifted from “Which configurator should we build?” to “What kind of guidance does a customer actually need here?” This reframing opened the door to new solutions that focused on decision support rather than configuration. I explored three complementary approaches.
1. Shower Door Quiz (Revamped Guided Selling)
This concept reframed the experience as a quiz-style entry point, similar to other successful finders on the site.

Purpose:
-
Help customers who feel overwhelmed or don’t know where to start.
-
Reduce anxiety by asking simple, plain-language questions.
Tradeoff:
-
Risked reintroducing drop-off from step-based flows if overused.
2. Guided Tabs on the PLP
This concept layered guidance directly into the PLP, allowing customers to self-direct without committing to a full flow.

Purpose:
-
Let customers explore criteria non-linearly.
-
Aligned more closely with natural browsing behavior.

​​​
Tradeoff:
-
Needed strong callouts and education to avoid feeling redundant with filters.
​
​
3. Hybrid Smart Filters
The concept combined the strengths of both ideas.


Purpose:
-
Use the existing filter system as the foundation.
-
Understand which filters mattered most for their situation.
Tradeoff:
-
It provided less explicit step-by-step direction than a quiz or configurator.
The Final Experience
Guided Shower Tabs
Guided Shower Tabs struck the right balance across all constraints:

For customers
-
Reduced anxiety by breaking decisions into understandable chunks.
-
Preserved freedom to explore and revise choices.
-
Made education visible before mistakes were made.

​
For the business
-
Worked within existing PLP and filter infrastructure.
-
Avoided backend complexity and fulfillment risk.
-
Scaled to other high-consideration categories.

​
For engineering
-
Leveraged existing components with minimal net-new logic.
-
Allowed phased rollout and testing.
Tradeoffs & Delivery
What This Taught Me
Moving away from a configurator meant intentionally prioritizing guidance over dynamic product configuration.
While the configurator concept tested well with customers, it risked implying levels of customization that the backend system could not support.
Instead, the final experience leveraged existing PLP and filtering infrastructure to introduce guided decision support without creating fulfillment risk.
This approach allowed us to:
-
Deliver guidance earlier in the browsing journey.
-
Maintain system integrity for drop-ship SKUs.
-
Reduce engineering complexity.
-
Launch a scalable pattern that could expand to other categories.
The result was a solution that balanced usability insights with operational reality.
This project reinforced that usability insights must be balanced with technical and operational realities.
Customers often respond positively to highly interactive experiences, but the most effective solution is not always the most complex one.
More Projects
Social Proof Platform
A behavioral signal system that surfaces real purchase activity at the moment of decision, reducing hesitation and accelerating conversion across digital and PRO surfaces.
Keep Shopping For
Keep Shopping For is a personalized entry point for returning shoppers, grouping browsing history into intuitive categories so customers can quickly resume their journeys.
Visual Scout
A visual-first discovery system designed to translate instinct into intelligent recommendations. Visual Scout reimagined how customers discover visually driven products by allowing them to react to items and receive recommendations based on taste, not filters.