Designing for the shift to mobile.

TL;DR

Johnlewis.com predates the smartphone era — a 250,000-product retail experience built for desktop, long before mobile became mainstream. Translating that to a native app meant making deliberate choices about what mattered most to customers, stripping back complexity without losing capability.

The process was grounded in research: starting with customer personas to understand behaviours and motivations, moving into sketching, then visual design, prototyping, and user testing with both colleagues and customers. Findings fed directly back into the experience, keeping every decision anchored to real behaviour rather than assumption.

The apps won four Drapers Awards in 2016: Best Customer Experience, Best Use of Mobile, Best App, and Outstanding Digital Experience.