Case 01
2025
Pick list
The lack of a native pick list was one of the top reasons self-shipping merchants stopped using Shopify to fulfill their orders. I advocated for it for several years and shared interview insights with leadership. In 2025, I led the project as the designer from kickoff to launch. Featured in 2025 Summer Editions.
01 · Context
- Pick list was identified as one of the top missing fulfillment capabilities in a 1,000+ merchant survey and was one of 3 mission-critical initiatives that quarter
- A pick list is an ordered list of items to collect from storage to fulfill a group of orders, typically prepared at the start of the fulfillment process
- Required to build the feature within Order Printer, Shopify's 1P document generation app, to keep the platform modular
02 · Scope
- Led the project as designer and subject matter expert over ~5 months
- Planned, facilitated, and analyzed 12 user interviews to drive high-confidence decisions
- Collaborated closely with adjacent teams to keep designs cohesive across intersecting projects
Example 1
Preventing double-fulfillment
- Merchants with mixed fulfillment setups risk picking 3PL orders by mistake since the backend treats self-fulfilled and 3PL orders identically and reworking it was out of scope
- Introduced a location filter in the print modal that appears when multiple fulfillment locations are detected, letting merchants exclude 3PL orders without backend changes
Example 2
No-code customization
- Most merchants don't know how to edit Liquid templates directly, so they use 3P apps or hire developers to help them customize
- Interviews and benchmarking confirmed a UI-configurable set would cover ~90% of use cases
- Designed a configuration panel where merchants can show, hide, and reorder columns via drag and drop
03 · Impact
- Pick list was the only one of 3 mission-critical initiatives to ship on time
- Over 6 months with no additional marketing, active shops grew 6× and week-over-week usage retention nearly doubled to 51%, driven by holiday season adoption
Active shops · organic growth
6×
Week-over-week retention
51%