1) The context
When the Messenger team came to HQ with the idea for Messenger Memorial Maker, we already had a strong partnership in place from developing My Designer Lab, their professional design tool used by funeral home directors to customize and order memorial products.
For this new initiative, Messenger wanted a simplified, consumer-facing platform, something more akin to Zazzle, but tailored specifically to memorial products. The experience needed to feel approachable and streamlined, allowing customers to design items on their own while still connecting to My Designer Lab for more complex orders.
The new site needed to include:
- Product categories to help users browse and compare options
- Smart defaults that remember the user’s past preferences
- Bundled products grouped by case, making it easy to purchase coordinating items at once
- Clear delivery and cut-off times to set expectations during a time-sensitive process
- Classic e-commerce essentials like search, filters, order history, and more
2) The design
The Messenger Memorial Maker design needed to feel warm, trustworthy, and easy to use, especially given the sensitivity of the products. Using the branding and logos provided by the Messenger team, we adapted components from My Designer Lab to accelerate development while introducing new elements only where the consumer experience required them.
A major focus of the design process was translating Messenger’s complex product catalog into an intuitive interface. This included:
- Product enhancements: Each item has its own set of customizable options, such as size, theme, or paper type, with nested enhancements that appear only after a primary choice is selected.
- Sibling products: Some products appear as a single item to the shopper but consist of multiple variants with different enhancement sets. We designed a unified structure that keeps these variants together while presenting customization options clearly.
As requirements evolved, we continued refining the design to support:
- Large theme libraries
- Dynamic pricing updates as users customize
- Alignment with Tailwind variables across light and dark modes
- Clear product proofing and approval before checkout
- The ability to check out selected items rather than the entire cart
3) The development
Messenger Memorial Maker follows the same proven development process as My Designer Lab, adapted for a consumer-facing e-commerce experience. The goal was to support complex product logic and customization while keeping the experience simple and approachable.
Feature development moves through a clear, collaborative flow, from planning and design alignment to phased implementation and review. Because Messenger Memorial Maker connects directly to My Designer Lab, development requires careful coordination to ensure consumer actions translate cleanly into professional workflows behind the scenes.
Our team worked closely with designers to validate UI and UX decisions early, then mapped each feature into a clear technical plan. From product customization logic to cart behavior and checkout flows, every component was built with scalability and clarity in mind.
Built carefully. Shipped with confidence.
All work is peer-reviewed, tested, and approved before release, allowing the platform to ship confidently while remaining flexible as product offerings and requirements evolve.
