Pottery barn 2025
Internship Project - From Concept to Reality: Connected Design Tools and Smart Room Planner
During my Summer 2025 internship at Pottery Barn, I led research and design exploration around the integration of room-planning, AI, and AR tools within the company’s design ecosystem. The project aimed to address fragmented user flows across features like Shop by Style, Design Boards, and Room Planner, and to uncover opportunities to create a more cohesive, transparent, and personalized shopping experience. My responsibilities included conducting competitive analysis, reviewing industry benchmarks, interviewing the Design Crew and stakeholders, and synthesizing research insights into actionable opportunities.
The outcome of my work proposed three categories of design opportunities: a guided assistant to help users navigate tools seamlessly, real-time features to support design confidence, and smart personalization powered by AI, AR, and machine learning to enhance visualization and product recommendations. These initiatives have the potential to increase qualified engagement, improve decision-making, reduce returns, and ultimately drive higher conversion rates. The proposed solutions are now in the process of being implemented into Pottery Barn’s digital platforms and the Williams-Sonoma Enterprise, shaping the next generation of immersive design and shopping experiences.
TIME
June 2025 - August 2025
TEAM
Creative Director (Andrea Drake)
UI/UX Designer (Joanna Buniak)
UI/UX Designer (Claudia Bracy)
Principal User Experience Designer – Tech Innovation & UX (Alon Blum)
Leader User Experience Designer – Outward Engineer App & Host (Jelissa Bueza)
tools
Figma
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects
Role
UX/UI Design
High-Fidelity Prototypes
Design System
Responsive Design
Animations
Research
— BACKGROUND
In 2025, Pottery Barn’s digital shopping ecosystem included tools such as Shop by Style, Design Boards, and Room Planner, each designed to help customers discover products, curate mood boards, and visualize furniture in their homes.
However, despite strong performance from features like Shop by Style, shoppers still faced a fragmented journey across tools. Many struggled to connect discovery, design, and purchase in a seamless way.
Meanwhile, consumer demand for immersive experiences was rapidly growing. With Room Planner already incorporating room-scanning AR technology, there was clear potential to expand these capabilities.
In Summer 2025, I joined the Pottery Barn team to investigate how AI, AR, and room-planning tools could be better integrated to create a cohesive and personalized design experience. My research uncovered opportunities to guide customers toward the right tools, increase confidence through real-time features, and leverage AI/AR for smarter personalization—all with the potential to drive higher conversion rates, reduce returns, and extend customer engagement.
— PROBLEM
How might we create a more cohesive and personalized digital design experience for Pottery Barn shoppers that builds confidence, makes personal style easier to define, and encourages a seamless user journey across all of our design tools?
This project explores how users engage with room planning, artificial intelligence (AI), and augmented reality (AR) tools when designing their spaces and shopping for furniture. I chose this topic to address growing trends in immersive shopping experiences and to uncover opportunities for improving tool integration/connection and user flow across our ecosystem.
— SOLUTION
Redesign the experience to give customers a guided, confidence-building, and personalized journey that helps them discover, evaluate, and select the right products with ease.
By introducing a guided assistant, customers will feel like they have an expert by their side, instantly leading them to the right tools. With real-time design support and toolbars, they can stay on track and make decisions confidently. Through smart personalization powered by AI, AR, and machine learning, customers can visualize products in their own space, receive tailored recommendations, and engage with curated options that match their needs.
These enhancements not only create a more engaging and seamless shopping journey, but also generate insights from quiz data to uncover unmet product demand. Together, they drive higher sales, improve decision-making, increase conversions, reduce returns, and encourage customers to spend more time exploring the site.
01
A non-intrusive, on-demand helper that simplifies the design process through an interactive style quiz. It guides users step by step, helping them define their style, plan layouts, and explore our 20 SBS styles with clear descriptions. At the end, it delivers a personalized, AI-powered design board that curates styles, images, and shoppable pages, turning a complex design journey into an easy, inspiring, and tailored experience.
AI Guided Design Assistant
02
Now that the user has entered our design tool chain and we’ve got them hooked, this is where we can highlight all of the tools available. The bar connects all our design tools in one place and is seen across all our design related sites.
Design Tool Bar
