E-commerce — Cappelen Damm
Replaced a legacy e-commerce platform for Norway's largest publisher with a unified, scalable webshop — expanding from 3 user groups to 7+, eliminating content bottlenecks, and consolidating fragmented systems into one experience.
Solo designer · 9 developers · 1 product manager
Before & after
About Cappelen Damm
Cappelen Damm is one of Norway's largest publishers, with a broad catalogue spanning literature, educational materials, and non-fiction. They sell and distribute knowledge, culture, and reading experiences to readers, students, and institutions across Norway — operating both direct-to-consumer and through institutional channels with a wide range of subscription and purchase models.
Challenges
Scale
Redesigning the entire webshop while scaling from 2–3 to 7+ user groups, each with different needs, permissions, and purchase flows.
Speed
Rapid iterations and tight delivery timelines in a team of nine developers, requiring parallel workstreams without sacrificing design quality.
Complexity
A flexible architecture enabling dynamic changes based on business needs — requiring deep collaboration with developers to manage system complexity.
Silos
Cross-departmental workflows were fragmented. Bridging organisational silos through workshops was as much a part of the work as the interface.
What I delivered
Unified webshop
A modern, cohesive interface unifying previously separate concepts into a single streamlined experience across the full product catalogue.
CMS templates
Scalable page templates empowering content editors to manage updates, campaigns, and product listings independently — without developer involvement.
User group architecture
Designed flows and permission structures supporting 7+ distinct user groups, from individual consumers to institutional buyers and subscription holders.
Workflow redesign
Facilitated workshops and iterative process design to consolidate cross-departmental workflows, improving collaboration between editorial, sales, and tech teams.
How I work
Before designing interfaces, I map the problem space. For the registration flow, that meant auditing the existing experience, identifying friction and drop-off points, then rebuilding the entire user journey from scratch with a cleaner information architecture.
Registration redesign — New user flow mapped in Figma with annotated decision points before any UI was drawn
Flow audit — Existing registration experience broken down screen by screen to surface friction and drop-off
Market analysis — Competitor benchmarking and user research informing the product direction
The work
Homepage — Modular CMS blocks editors reconfigure weekly without dev support
Product page — Unified layout serving 7+ buyer types from a single template
CMS editor — Content teams publish campaigns independently in minutes
Commerce platform — Crystallize product management UI handling variants, pricing, and catalogue structure across all user groups
The result
What started as a platform replacement became a fundamental rethinking of how Cappelen Damm operates digitally. The new webshop serves a substantially broader user base with tailored flows for each buyer type — while giving editorial and sales teams the autonomy to manage their own content without waiting on developers. Fragmented legacy systems were replaced by a single, cohesive platform, and cross-departmental workflows were consolidated through iterative process design. The project demonstrated that good design isn't just interface work — it's reshaping the systems and processes behind the screen.