ReturnBear
Scope
Design Lead
Client
ReturnBear
Year
[2023]
Industry
Logistics
Redefine the return process for e-tailers in Canada. Build a service and a brand that ensures customer satisfaction, drives savings, and reduces time to resell.
Returns in Canadian e-commerce were slow, costly, and disconnected, with retailers, logistics providers, and customers each operating on their own systems and timelines. As a founding team, we weren't improving an existing product, we were building the service and the brand from zero, and aligning three separate parties around a single process that had never been designed as one before.
Service Design
Returns only work if they work for everyone touching the transaction, not just the customer. We designed for three sides at once, the 3PLs handling logistics, the retailers issuing refunds, and the customers trying to get their money back, and built four products to manage that across both the retailer side and our own. Through an e-commerce evaluation and concept generation workshops, we landed on a direction we called "Unshopping": familiar, because it mirrored the e-commerce experience customers already knew, and delightful, because it made the return feel like receiving free money instead of a chore.
Build & Validation
Turning that direction into something buildable meant running into real feasibility constraints early. We worked closely with developers to align on a scope we could actually ship, tested with users on a compressed timeline, and built a library of new patterns to keep design and development consistent as the team moved fast.
Brand and Scale
Building the ReturnBear brand alongside the product came with real tradeoffs. We started with a workshop across the broader team to ground the brand in the company's actual mission and values, then built out visual worlds to draw from and refactored our product's visual strategy around that direction. From there, I organized and managed a creative team with dedicated ownership over voice, illustration, video, and more. With more people in place, we had the bandwidth to take the business further, standing up sales, marketing, standardization, hiring, and testing.
Deliverables
Four-product return and exchange system, spanning the retailer side and ReturnBear's own
ReturnBear
Scope
Design Lead
Client
ReturnBear
Year
[2023]
Industry
Logistics
Redefine the return process for e-tailers in Canada. Build a service and a brand that ensures customer satisfaction, drives savings, and reduces time to resell.
Returns in Canadian e-commerce were slow, costly, and disconnected, with retailers, logistics providers, and customers each operating on their own systems and timelines. As a founding team, we weren't improving an existing product, we were building the service and the brand from zero, and aligning three separate parties around a single process that had never been designed as one before.
Service Design
Returns only work if they work for everyone touching the transaction, not just the customer. We designed for three sides at once, the 3PLs handling logistics, the retailers issuing refunds, and the customers trying to get their money back, and built four products to manage that across both the retailer side and our own. Through an e-commerce evaluation and concept generation workshops, we landed on a direction we called "Unshopping": familiar, because it mirrored the e-commerce experience customers already knew, and delightful, because it made the return feel like receiving free money instead of a chore.
Build & Validation
Turning that direction into something buildable meant running into real feasibility constraints early. We worked closely with developers to align on a scope we could actually ship, tested with users on a compressed timeline, and built a library of new patterns to keep design and development consistent as the team moved fast.
Brand and Scale
Building the ReturnBear brand alongside the product came with real tradeoffs. We started with a workshop across the broader team to ground the brand in the company's actual mission and values, then built out visual worlds to draw from and refactored our product's visual strategy around that direction. From there, I organized and managed a creative team with dedicated ownership over voice, illustration, video, and more. With more people in place, we had the bandwidth to take the business further, standing up sales, marketing, standardization, hiring, and testing.
Deliverables
Four-product return and exchange system, spanning the retailer side and ReturnBear's own
ReturnBear
Scope
Design Lead
Client
ReturnBear
Year
[2023]
Industry
Logistics
Redefine the return process for e-tailers in Canada. Build a service and a brand that ensures customer satisfaction, drives savings, and reduces time to resell.
Returns in Canadian e-commerce were slow, costly, and disconnected, with retailers, logistics providers, and customers each operating on their own systems and timelines. As a founding team, we weren't improving an existing product, we were building the service and the brand from zero, and aligning three separate parties around a single process that had never been designed as one before.
Service Design
Returns only work if they work for everyone touching the transaction, not just the customer. We designed for three sides at once, the 3PLs handling logistics, the retailers issuing refunds, and the customers trying to get their money back, and built four products to manage that across both the retailer side and our own. Through an e-commerce evaluation and concept generation workshops, we landed on a direction we called "Unshopping": familiar, because it mirrored the e-commerce experience customers already knew, and delightful, because it made the return feel like receiving free money instead of a chore.
Build & Validation
Turning that direction into something buildable meant running into real feasibility constraints early. We worked closely with developers to align on a scope we could actually ship, tested with users on a compressed timeline, and built a library of new patterns to keep design and development consistent as the team moved fast.
Brand and Scale
Building the ReturnBear brand alongside the product came with real tradeoffs. We started with a workshop across the broader team to ground the brand in the company's actual mission and values, then built out visual worlds to draw from and refactored our product's visual strategy around that direction. From there, I organized and managed a creative team with dedicated ownership over voice, illustration, video, and more. With more people in place, we had the bandwidth to take the business further, standing up sales, marketing, standardization, hiring, and testing.
Deliverables
Four-product return and exchange system, spanning the retailer side and ReturnBear's own