FedEx

Redefining the print customization journey for both

customers and team members

Internship Project

Product Strategy

User Research

Team

Office Customer Experience & Innovation

Duration

June 2025 - August 2025

Role

UX Design Intern

Skill

Usability testing, End-to-end product design, Visual Design

FedEx Office’s Product Detail Page (PDP) and Configurator are the heart of the online print-ordering journey — where customers browse, customize, and bring their ideas to life on paper. During my internship, I worked on redesigning these critical touch points. The goal was to simplify complex customization flows, reduce cognitive load, and help users make informed decisions without frustration.

A Frustrating Path to Custom Printing

CONTEXT

PROJECT SCHEDULE

10 Weeks at FedEx

In order to dive deep into the problem space and arrive at a well-grounded design solution, I structured my 10 weeks at FedEx into four phases.

Internal Research

CURRENT STATE RESEARCH

Understand internal goals for the redesign, how sucess is measured and build context

INTERNAL RESEARCH

Gaining Context Around the Problem

Before jumping into solutions, I needed to step back and build context. I wanted to understand how the PDP and Configurator had evolved, what internal experts had already uncovered, and how it compared to the market. This meant looking beyond the interface to see how product rules, legacy technology, and workflows shaped the experience.

To build this context, I combined three approaches:

INTERNAL RESEARCH

Stakeholder 1:1 & Reviewing Past Research

I began by conducting 1:1 conversations with key stakeholders and reviewed past research reports, usability findings, and analytics to understand the project’s history and evolving business priorities. These exploratory work helped clarify not only what had been tried before, why certain design directions were deprioritized in the past, and where new opportunities for improvement lies.

Organizing the notes, quotes, and data from my research through affinity mapping

INTERNAL RESEARCH

Heuristic Analysis

While the experience excelled in consistency and standards as well as aesthetic and minimalist design, there were clear areas for improvement. Specifically, we could make configuration options more visible by moving away from hiding them within drop downs to support recognition over recall, increase flexibility and efficiency of use, and redesign the print option selection process to better align with real-world mental models.

Identified usability gaps in consistency, visibility of system status, and user control through heuristic analysis.

Consistency & Standard

Aesthetic and minimalist design

Recognition rather than recall

Flexibility and efficiency of use

Match between system and the real world

INTERNAL RESEARCH

Competitive Analysis

I analyzed direct competitors like Staples and Vistaprint, as well as indirect ones like Canva, Custom Ink, and even Tesla’s car configurator. The main gap across experiences lies within decision support and flexibility in design customization.

Direct Competitors Evaluated

Staples Print
Office Depot
Vistaprint

Features Categories Evaluate

Product Detail Page
Error Handling & Confirmation
Price Transparency
Configuration Options
Design Customization
Decision Support

Challenges Rooted in Long-Standing Legacy Systems

The PDP and Configurator had not been meaningfully redesigned in years; deeply entangled with legacy systems, they were seen as complex and difficult to change, leading to a backlog of usability issues that remained unaddressed.

Breakdowns in Applying Core Usability Principles

The experience broke several core usability principles: users had to recall information instead of recognizing it, flows lacked efficiency, and technical jargon failed to match how customers think about print products.

Limitations in Customization and Decision Support Compared to Competitors

Compared to competitors, FedEx lacked strong customization tools and decision support; other platforms offered guided flows, real-time previews, and clearer explanations that gave users confidence in their choices.

Key Insights Summary

From this I concluded…

This complexity stemmed from years of incremental changes layered onto legacy systems. My role was to propose a future-state experience that made customization more straightforward for users while still accommodating the necessary product rules at FedEx.

The challenge went beyond visual design — it centered on usability issues shaped by product rules and legacy systems.

How might we redesign the Product Detail Page (PDP) and Print Configurator so customers feel informed, in control, and confident at every step of the ordering process?

Customer Research

OUTSIDE IN VIEW

Uncovered where customers lose clarity, get confused, or stop trusting the flow

CUSTOMER RESEARCH

Primary Research: Hearing from Users Directly

After getting an internal perspective, I wanted to hear directly from users. I conducted 8 remote usability tests through UserTesting.com, asking participants to walk through the current PDP and Configurator flows while thinking aloud.

User testing confirmed patterns from stakeholder insights and identified actionable design opportunities

Transforming Insight to Design Strategy

INSIGHT SYNTHESIS

Distill findings into clear design opportunities rooted in real user needs

DESIGN STRATEGY

To decrease customer confusion while maintaining

flexibility, we need to consider:

Design Ideation

EXPLORATION

Explore MVP and future-state design solutions that improve transparency, preview control, and decision confidence

DESIGN IDEATION

Explored three design directions to balance impact,

feasibility, and innovation.

FINAL DESIGN SOLUTION

Narrowing Product Scope

After reviewing the options with internal design team and stakeholders, I moved forward with a hybrid of Concepts 1 & 2. Balancing present needs with future growth, I focused on realistic solutions while laying the groundwork for iterations as user needs evolve.

FINAL DESIGN SOLUTION

Solution 1: Product Detail Page (PDP)

Clarity from the start

By surfacing all options, adding “FedEx Recommended” labels, and clarifying trade-offs with visuals and plain language, the PDP reduces uncertainty and helps customers make faster, more confident choices.

Solution 2: Simple Editing Capabilities

Preview Experience

Customers can crop, rotate, fit-to-page, or add text directly within the preview. A one-click toggle between front and back pages helps reduce errors and streamlines adjustments without leaving the flow.

Solution 3: Progressive Disclosure

Two-step design for ease of use and customization

Basic Settings display key configuration choices already made in the PDP for quick confirmation, while less-used or advanced options are organized under Advanced Settings—reducing cognitive load without sacrificing flexibility.

Solution 4: Paper Selection

Paper choices, simplified

Research showed that paper selection was one of the hardest steps—too many options, hidden in dropdowns with unclear labels. The redesign surfaces the three most-used paper types for quick ordering, while keeping the full catalog available. Options are now organized by quality and color, with a filter to quickly narrow results.

Solution 5: Final Review

Confidence before checkout

A pre-checkout summary combines the design preview and configuration settings in one step. This final checkpoint gives users clarity and reassurance, reducing errors and ensuring they feel in control before placing an order.

Learnings

Looking back on this project, I found that the biggest lessons weren’t just about design outputs, but about how to work within complexity and move ideas forward.