A lightweight, self-serve Shopify app that helps merchants deliver high-quality customer support at scale through PartnerHero’s global CX teams—packaged into a frictionless, Shopify-native experience.
My role covered research, user flows, wireframing, prototyping, and UI design, aligned to Shopify Polaris patterns to build trust and reduce learning time.
Project Type
Shopify App, SaaS Product
Role
UX/UI Designer
Timeline
2022–2023
Tools
Sketch, Polaris (Shopify design system)
Scope
Research, Wireframing, Prototyping, Visual Design
Company
PartnerHero
Context & Opportunity
PartnerHero’s global CX teams could offer high-quality support at scale. The challenge was turning this operational capability into a lightweight, self-serve Shopify app with a frictionless user experience.
Merchant Pain Points:
- Customer emails piling up during nights and weekends
- High costs of hiring and training support staff
- Difficulty maintaining consistent tone and quality
- App fatigue caused by fragmented tooling
Objectives
The project focused on four primary UX objectives:
- Establish trust through clear tone, privacy signals, and consistent UI patterns
- Communicate Humanize’s value proposition in under 20 seconds
- Design a frictionless Shopify onboarding flow
- Make support status and performance immediately visible and understandable
Design Process
I followed a structured, human-centered design process focused on reducing friction, building trust, and aligning with Shopify merchants’ expectations.
Research
Before defining flows or UI, I conducted a focused research phase to understand merchant needs, competitive expectations within the Shopify ecosystem, and the operational requirements of Humanize’s support workflows.
User Flows
I mapped the core user flows required to activate and use Humanize effectively:
- First-time onboarding
- Policy & product configuration
- Support activation
- Tracking active conversations
- Account management & billing
Polaris Design System
Because Humanize lives inside the Shopify Admin, I used Shopify Polaris as the foundation and extended it only where necessary. This kept the UI familiar, reduced learning time, and increased merchant trust from the first interaction.
Onboarding Experience
- Make installation feel effortless
- Ask only for essential information
- Explain how Humanize works without overwhelming users
- Provide reassurance at every step
Knowledge Base Creation
To enable reliable, high-quality support, merchants were required to provide at least 10 knowledge base articles. I designed a guided flow that broke this task into manageable steps without overwhelming users.
UI Design
Once requirements were clear, I created low-fidelity wireframes to define structure and hierarchy. After validation, these were translated into high-fidelity designs, resulting in a polished, Shopify-native app merchants could trust from day one.
UI Previews
Key screens inside the Shopify Admin showing onboarding, knowledge base setup, performance metrics, and support visibility.
Launch & Impact
Humanize launched successfully on the Shopify App Store. This project demonstrated PartnerHero’s ability to bring a real SaaS product to market fast, lean, and merchant-driven.
Early results included:
Paid subscriptions from small & mid-sized merchants
Positive feedback on onboarding simplicity
High trust due to Shopify-native patterns and clarity
Clear value for merchants struggling with email volume