Product Design · Commerce UX · Design Systems
GCI Digital Commerce Product Experience
Rebranding and restructuring a complex institutional product catalog into a clear, accessible, and scalable commerce experience.
I helped shape a more modern digital experience for GCI—organizing diverse product families, strengthening the visual brand, and creating repeatable patterns that supported both institutional purchasing and public product discovery.
Project overview
Turning a broad catalog into a more understandable product experience.
GCI’s catalog spans products with very different specifications, purchasing requirements, and decision points. The experience needed to feel unified without oversimplifying the information buyers require.
Lead design work across the digital rebrand, product organization, experience direction, interface patterns, and responsive presentation.
Help institutional and public buyers understand what GCI sells, locate relevant products, and move toward purchase or inquiry with greater confidence.
Support office and park furniture, chemicals, cleaning products, signs, and other categories within one coherent commerce framework.
A clearer catalog architecture and reusable digital system designed to support product discovery, comparison, and purchasing decisions.
The challenge
A catalog built around many product types can become difficult to browse when categories, specifications, and purchase paths are not presented consistently.
The goal
Create a modern commerce experience that balanced institutional credibility with the clarity and usability people expect from contemporary retail platforms.
My response
I connected the digital rebrand, catalog structure, category templates, product pages, purchasing guidance, and responsive UI into one scalable system.
Product ecosystem
Different products require different decision-making information.
The catalog was not treated as a flat collection of items. Each product family was considered according to the details, documents, options, and purchasing questions its buyers would need.
Office and park furniture
Dimensions, materials, finishes, installation context, product imagery, quantities, and lead times.
Chemicals
Use case, size or volume, handling information, supporting documentation, and institutional ordering needs.
Cleaning products
Compatible surfaces, applications, quantities, product variations, and clear supporting information.
Street and facility signs
Size, material, mounting, customization, message requirements, and quote or inquiry pathways.
Digital rebrand
Modernizing the brand without losing institutional trust.
The visual direction preserved GCI’s established authority while introducing a cleaner digital hierarchy, more consistent product imagery, stronger calls to action, and reusable interface patterns.
- Brand application: More consistent logo, color, typography, imagery, and promotional treatment across the experience.
- Visual clarity: Stronger contrast between navigation, product content, specifications, and purchase actions.
- Product context: A shift toward imagery and layouts that help buyers understand products in use.
- Scalability: Patterns designed to support new categories and product information over time.
Experience design
Reducing friction from discovery through purchasing.
The experience was organized around the questions buyers ask: What is available? Is this right for my need? What information is required? How do I purchase, request a quote, or order through an institutional process?
Organizing the catalog around recognizable buyer needs.
Clearer category relationships, product labels, and discovery paths helped reduce the burden of navigating a large, specialized catalog.
- More understandable product groupings
- Consistent category naming and navigation cues
- Filtering and search patterns designed around relevant product attributes
Shared structure with category-specific flexibility.
Reusable category templates supported consistent browsing while allowing furniture, chemicals, cleaning products, and signs to surface the attributes most relevant to each category.
Turning product pages into decision-support tools.
Product imagery, specifications, variations, downloads, fulfillment details, institutional guidance, and related actions were brought together in a more predictable hierarchy.
Supporting more than a standard retail checkout.
The experience accounted for the ways institutional and public buyers may need to move forward, including direct purchase, quote requests, purchase orders, invoicing, tax-exempt needs, or product customization.
- Clear next steps and progress guidance
- Contextual support for specialized purchasing paths
- Accessible form labels, errors, and confirmation states
Design system and accessibility
Reusable patterns connected the experience from navigation to checkout.
The system emphasized consistency, accessibility, and implementation clarity across navigation, product cards, filters, accordions, forms, calls to action, and responsive states.
Accessible
Contrast, focus states, keyboard use, labels, errors, and readable hierarchy were treated as part of the design.
Reusable
Components could support multiple categories and workflows without creating separate visual systems.
Responsive
Layouts and controls were designed to remain usable across desktop, tablet, and mobile contexts.
Build-aware
Patterns were considered with front-end behavior, content variability, and production QA in mind.
End result
A clearer foundation for a complex commerce ecosystem.
The redesigned direction connected GCI’s digital brand, diverse product catalog, institutional workflows, and responsive UI into a more coherent product experience.
Clearer discovery
Product groupings and interface patterns gave buyers more understandable paths into a broad catalog.
More useful product content
Repeatable page structures helped surface the information needed to evaluate different product types.
Greater scalability
A shared digital system created a stronger foundation for new products, categories, content, and purchasing needs.
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