CASE STUDY · SHUTTERSTOCK

Senior Product Designer @ Shutterstock

B2B Enterprise Design System & SaaS Experiences for the Global Leader in Stock Media

ROLE

Senior Product Designer

REPORTING TO

Director of Product Design

Shutterstock case study presentation image

CONTEXT

Shutterstock Enterprise Catalog needed a modern curation workflow for high-stakes clients.

CHALLENGE

The legacy interface overwhelmed users with excessive options and disjointed workflows.

USERS

Enterprise account managers, curators, creative teams, and media-sector clients.

OUTCOME

A modern AI-powered curation tool designed to accelerate discovery from days to hours.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

01 · Project Overview

02 · Problem

03 · Enterprise User Needs

04 · Usability Issues

05 · Addressing AI Search

06 · Usability Testing

07 · User Interviews

08 · Thematic Analysis

09 · Feature Recommendations

10 · Conclusion

01 · PROJECT OVERVIEW

Streamlining content discovery for enterprise creative teams.

The core challenge was to streamline content discovery and curation for enterprise account managers serving high-stakes clients across entertainment, marketing, and media sectors. The legacy Shutterstock Enterprise Catalog platform’s cluttered interface, excessive options, and disjointed workflows frustrated users, slowing asset selection and integration into production pipelines.

Enterprise Editorial Catalog

Curated

Cluttered legacy flow

Launch assets are hard to relocate

Editorial launch path

winter editorial launch package

Fewer

decision points

Clear

launch sets

Trust

in handoff

Legacy workflows slowed rapid creative review

Users lacked confidence in where curated assets lived, how collections were organized, and how to return to saved work without retracing steps.

Efficiency gains and client trust in scalable creative solutions depended on a modern workflow overhaul.

02 · PROBLEM

Content buried under folders eroded efficiency for time-sensitive roles.

70%

of users did not know how to find saved assets during research.

Curators needed to deliver culturally resonant assets for global launches without losing time inside nested folders.

The research clarified a need to restore trust and accelerate curation from days to hours.

03 · ENTERPRISE USER NEEDS

Real-time feedback became the quiet killer of momentum.

Iterative testing with enterprise curators revealed that redesigned upload mechanisms still tripped over legacy echoes: ambiguous progress indicators during bulk transfers and inconsistent feedback loops where dropped files vanished without a trace.

Real-time validation previews

Preempt errors before they create session-level uncertainty.

Contextual tooltips

Anticipate intent without overwhelming the interface.

Adaptive progression signals

Use motion to show clear progression through upload and review flows.

04 · USABILITY ISSUES

Small metadata gaps turned review into a scavenger hunt.

Usability testing exposed bottlenecks in the asset detail page, where incomplete descriptions, scattered keyword inputs, and opaque approval toggles forced users into a scavenger hunt for context. Mismatched client tags created compliance concerns and stalled approvals for time-sensitive launches.

05 · ADDRESSING AI SEARCH

Semantic search had to parse intent with surgical accuracy.

By embedding semantic AI into Boolean queries—like “red AND cars NOT balloons”—the tool could surface hyper-relevant results from millions without exhaustive manual sifting. Dynamic filters for image types, people exclusion, and editorial safeguards refined outputs in real time for brand-compliant curation.

06 · USABILITY TESTING

Research grounded the redesign in real Jobs-To-Be-Done.

60-minute moderated sessions

UserZoom studies immersed participants in real scenarios like sourcing assets for eCommerce campaigns and enterprise media briefs.

Live platform walkthroughs

Participants received secure logins and moved from initial login to collection builds while the team captured unfiltered behavior.

Raw friction points

The study revealed overlooked navigation and asset-management breakdowns inside the legacy SaaS.

07 · USER INTERVIEWS

Remote interviews exposed how collection builds really unfolded.

The sessions captured unfiltered interactions from login to collection building, revealing the raw friction points in navigation and asset management that the legacy SaaS had long overlooked.

Navigation refinements were tested against unlabeled mental models.

Tree tests presented unlabeled site maps to gauge intuitive paths for queries like “check saved images” or “find trending content,” measuring success rates, first-click accuracy, and backtracking errors. A/B tests compared the legacy structure with optimized paths, tracking completion times, error rates, and qualitative think-aloud feedback.

08 · THEMATIC ANALYSIS

Themes turned scattered pain points into actionable patterns.

I used affinity diagramming after sessions, grouping raw observations, quotes, and pain points into emergent subthemes through collaborative workshops with the design team. Clusters around navigation confusion, repeated collection creation, and the need for visual recency cues revealed the patterns that shaped the recommendation set.

09 · FEATURE RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendations were tied directly to observed behavior.

The synthesis process refined recommendations by turning user pain points into prioritized directives: sort by recency instead of alphabetically, show the latest saved image on holding cards, and add stronger visual hinting to reduce cognitive load.

Sort by recency

Surface recently updated department collections first, matching how users actually return to work.

Latest saved image previews

Use visual scanning instead of name recall to help users recognize where their assets live.

Drag-and-drop asset moves

Reduce repeated collection creation and clarify movement between personal and shared spaces.

10 · CONCLUSION

The post-save experience became the highest-impact opportunity.

The usability study exposed critical gaps in the post-save experience despite strong onboarding: while 75% of participants successfully saved new images, 100% failed to locate those saved items. Sharing collections proved equally challenging, with only 33% success in Scenario 2. These findings underscored persistent bottlenecks in discoverability, recency signaling, and collaborative workflows.

FUTURE ITERATION TESTS

A/B tests can lift task success above 80%.

Prioritizing high-impact interventions—prominent visual recency cues, streamlined drag-and-drop sharing, and redesigned collection views—creates a clear path toward a more competitive, Canva-like creative hub for individual creators and enterprise-scale adoption.

Senior Product Designer @ Shutterstock

Senior Product Designer @ Shutterstock

Senior Product Designer @ Shutterstock

Streamlining content discovery for enterprise creative teams.

Streamlining content discovery for enterprise creative teams.

Content buried under folders eroded efficiency for time-sensitive roles.

Content buried under folders eroded efficiency for time-sensitive roles.

Content buried under folders eroded efficiency for time-sensitive roles.

Real-time feedback became the quiet killer of momentum.

Small metadata gaps turned review into a scavenger hunt.

Small metadata gaps turned review into a scavenger hunt.

Semantic search had to parse intent with surgical accuracy.

Semantic search had to parse intent with surgical accuracy.

Research grounded the redesign in real Jobs-To-Be-Done.

Research grounded the redesign in real Jobs-To-Be-Done.

Research grounded the redesign in real Jobs-To-Be-Done.

Remote interviews exposed how collection builds really unfolded.

Remote interviews exposed how collection builds really unfolded.

Navigation refinements were tested against unlabeled mental models.

Navigation refinements were tested against unlabeled mental models.

Themes turned scattered pain points into actionable patterns.

Themes turned scattered pain points into actionable patterns.

Recommendations were tied directly to observed behavior.

The post-save experience became the highest-impact opportunity.

The post-save experience became the highest-impact opportunity.

A/B tests can lift task success above 80%.

A/B tests can lift task success above 80%.

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