Elevating the custom door experience.
Context
High Sierra Custom Door has been crafting premium custom doors since 1992, building a reputation across California, Montana, and beyond through quality manufacturing and dependable partnerships. Despite decades of earning the trust of high-end contractors and discerning clients, their digital presence had gone untouched — leaving a gap between the caliber of their work and the first impression their website made.
My Role
Duration
Lead Designer
6 months
Tools
Dovetail
Figma/Figjam
The Goal
Redesign their digital presence from the ground up to reflect the quality and professionalism High Sierra had spent decades earning in the field. This meant creating a visually compelling and modern experience that resonated with their ideal audience, while positioning them competitively in a market where their outdated site was letting newer competitors gain the upper hand.
Our Approach
Gathering insights from both internal/external stakeholders to uncover pain points with HSCD's existing digital experience and identify new opportunities to better position the brand in the market.
01
Developing initial visual design explorations through gut testing, competitive analysis, and style tiles to establish a clear aesthetic direction aligned with HSCD's brand and target audience.
02
Utilize Continuous Discovery to frequently gather feedback from users to improve the portal.
03
01
Discovery
HMW create an experience that captures needs from both internal and end users?
Internal Users
Sales Associates
“Gallery is very confusing, hand-holding is necessary even just to track where the user is. Quality of description and imagery is missing within gallery as well.”
Hardware Associates
“Hardware is extremely backseat so it needs to be emphasized more. Buyers don’t even know that hardware requires a separate quote entirely from finish.”
External Users
Contractors
“We don’t even go through the website to spit out a quote, we don’t know where to go so it’s just easier to do it over the phone.”
Designers
“Door types, wood types, styles are crucial and we need it to be clearer on the custom aspect.”
Competitive Analysis
Discovery
Trustile
Pro: The gallery functions more like a mood board than a catalog, which is great for early-stage users looking for ideas rather than specific SKUs.
Con: There’s minimal supporting information (materials, model names, dimensions), which can frustrate users who want to evaluate quality beyond visuals.
Simpson
Pro: There’s generally a more direct path from gallery image to product page, which helps bridge inspiration to action better than some competitors.
Con: The customization process can feel dense and fragmented, with many options presented at once and little guidance on where to start or what matters most.
Information Architecture
Discovery
Old Sitemap
A recurring theme across user research was poor site navigation. Users struggled to find their way through the experience due to a lack of clear signifiers and visual cues to guide them through the site.
Hidden Pages
Beyond navigation struggles, users had difficulty locating pages buried within dense, hard-to-reach areas of the site. Through research, we uncovered several important pages that were significantly disrupting the overall user journey.
Updated Sitemap
The redesigned sitemap introduces a two-layer architecture, surfacing the most critical information upfront in a digestible way, while allowing users to efficiently drill deeper for additional details when needed.
02
Define
High Sierra Reimagined
Style Tiles
With a clear understanding of user needs, goals, and pain points established, we moved into defining the visual direction for the redesign. A 20-second gut test along with style tiles were conducted with stakeholders to align on a modern aesthetic and layout that would set HSCD apart in a competitive market.
Library
Define
Through multiple rounds of style tile feedback, we finalized the updated visual direction and translated it into a comprehensive design system. Built to support a smooth handoff, the system was organized to be clearly understood by both developers and stakeholders alike.
To authentically reflect the uniqueness of High Sierra Custom Door, we built our library entirely from scratch, deliberately avoiding existing libraries in favor of a custom foundation that felt as one of a kind as the brand itself.
What’s in our library?
Native Components
Color Palette (Primitives & Tokens)
Variables for colors, sizing for web & mobile and spacing.
Layout Grids
WCAG Guidelines
