led and executed the design for Staples.com’s homepage experience
for the site and app interfaces
Role
Creative Design Intern
Role
Creative Design Intern
Timeline
June-August 2025
Team
Creative Team for Dotcom
Tools
Figma
Figjam
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Firefly
Skills
Product design
Product strategy
Graphic design
THE SOLUTION
I designed a refreshed homepage experience that seamlessly integrates weekly promotions, seasonal events, and monthly campaigns into a cohesive and visually engaging layout. The design uses clear hierarchy and dynamic visuals to highlight key offers and upcoming events while maintaining a consistent brand identity. This approach ensures users can easily discover promotions that matter to them while keeping the overall shopping experience clean.
THE PROBLEM
Frequent homepage updates at Staples often led to inconsistencies in layout and visual hierarchy, making it difficult to maintain a cohesive brand experience. The challenge was to effectively feature weekly promotions and monthly campaigns without overwhelming users or diluting the focus of key marketing events.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Staples refreshes its homepage experience every week, with larger redesigns occurring monthly. I was tasked with designing a smooth and visually engaging shopping experience for the August homepage of staples.com, showcasing key promotions and featured products. The goal was to create a cohesive layout that not only highlights Staples’ monthly campaigns but also drives user engagement across the site.
* NOTICE *
There is a limitation on the disclosure of the
specifics of this project due to company policies.
BRAND IDENTITY
During my first week, I quickly realized how essential brand identity is when designing for a large, well-established company like Staples. I made it a priority to rapidly observe, learn, and adapt by understanding how the brand wants to be perceived, how its design system is structured, and how different teams collaborate to bring the site to life.
KEY INSIGHTS
Typography & Colors
Staples uses its own custom font to ensure visual consistency across the site. The iconic Staples red plays a crucial role in brand recognition, with defined rules for its usage, ADA-compliant color pairings, and correlations with specific events or seasonal campaigns.
Priority Products & Promos
Homepage layout decisions often depend on collaboration between multiple teams, including merchandising and site operations. These discussions determine which products and promotions receive priority placement, ensuring that marketing goals align with user needs and overall site flow.
Brand Guidelines
Following brand guidelines is essential for keeping Staples familiar and trustworthy to its customers. At the same time, it is important to find ways to make the homepage feel fresh, engaging, and festive, especially during key promotional periods, while still staying true to the brand’s core identity.
AUGUST WIREFRAMES FOR HOMEPAGE
I worked cross-functionally with teams across the company to ensure that each week of August was accurately built and aligned with marketing priorities. Content planning and communication were managed through a shared FigJam file, which mapped out weekly wireframes including product details, promotional events, product hierarchy, and layout structure.
BUILDING OUT A WEEK
Directing User Experience
The homepage layout plays a key role in guiding users toward featured products and promotions. Each layout was intentionally structured to prioritize visibility of key offers, with colors and themes designed to appeal to Staples’ primary demographic of middle-aged female online shoppers.
Weekly Promotions
Promotions refreshed every week, so I used Figma components to streamline the process of updating products and assets while maintaining a consistent layout and visual hierarchy across the site.
Weekly / Monthly Events
Event-based content shifted monthly and sometimes weekly depending on holidays or seasonal campaigns. I designed themed modules to highlight these events, creating visual interest and drawing attention to relevant Staples products.
Tailored Product Rotation & Priority
Each week, product placements rotated and priorities shifted based on ongoing campaigns and user behavior. I created multiple versions of each homepage module to deliver a more tailored experience, allowing the site to automatically adjust and swap modules depending on the type of shopper. For example, during August, the top module featured Back to School content for most users since it’s one of Staples’ biggest yearly events, while business-focused shoppers instead saw a Top Business Deals module.
FINAL PRODUCT
Staples.com Homepage
I led the homepage experience for all four weeks of August, designing and launching a live product that reached users across Staples.com throughout the month.
Staples App Homepage
Much of the homepage content was also adapted for the Staples app, with subtle layout and formatting adjustments to ensure a seamless experience across platforms.
REFLECTIONS & TAKEAWAYS
With more time...
If I had more time, I would have loved to explore usability testing for the homepage experience. Through conversations with my team, I learned that testing isn’t a common part of their current workflow, and when it does occur, the content often changes too quickly for meaningful insights to be gathered. It would have been exciting to see how real user feedback could further shape and refine the homepage experience.
Reflections
Designing a live product that stayed up for an entire month and was used by thousands of customers was both thrilling and transformative. I learned how to communicate and collaborate effectively across multiple teams to bring a complex, fast-moving project to life. This experience challenged me to think beyond my own design preferences and understand what it means to design at scale for a large company.
I had the privilege of working alongside experienced industry designers, gaining invaluable insights into real-world workflows and strengthening my skills in professional design tools like Figma. Collaborating cross-functionally with PMs, UX researchers, merchants, and site teams taught me how different perspectives come together to shape a cohesive user experience and ultimately helped me grow into a more well-rounded designer. It gave me a deeper appreciation for how many moving parts come together to build a seamless digital experience.
This project not only strengthened my technical skills in Figma and design systems, but also reshaped how I think about collaboration, communication, and adaptability in fast-paced industry environments. It’s been an experience that has truly shaped me into a more thoughtful, strategic, and adaptable designer.
ADDITIONAL SITE ASSETS
I also designed site-wide banners and assets that extended the homepage experience, promoting aligned content across other parts of the site. These visual elements mirrored the homepage promotions to maintain consistency, reinforce brand identity, and create a seamless user experience across staples.com.