Featured case study

Repositioning Shutterstock for the AI era

Executive summary

Shutterstock had grown beyond traditional stock search, but its homepage still communicated a single-product marketplace. AI Search and Generate introduced new ways to begin creative work, while the familiar search experience remained central to existing customers.

With one month to complete design before an impending merger, I owned the homepage hero and designed the Creative Command Bar: one entry point connecting Search, AI Search, and Generate. The launch made Shutterstock’s broader platform visible, but it also reduced homepage search starts. The first release became evidence for a clearer next iteration.

Timeline

1 month

My role

Senior product designer · Homepage hero owner

Core collaboration

Lead designer · Search Engineering · Frontend Enablement · Brand Creative · Content

Platform shift

Search + AI Search + Generate

Three distinct creative workflows needed one understandable starting point.

Week-three behavior

13.68% → 9.62% search rate

Fewer homepage visitors chose to begin search after launch.

Quality signal

75.6% search-to-asset-detail

For logged-in users who did search, downstream behavior remained near the 75.1% pre-launch rate.

The Repositioning
Challenge

Make a broader platform understandable without weakening what customers already trusted

The homepage needed to support Shutterstock’s “Never Start From Scratch” campaign and communicate that licensed content and AI could work together. At the same time, introducing multiple ways to begin risked making the familiar search action harder to recognize.

Customer problem

Customers were largely unaware of the platform’s growing AI capabilities and could face new cognitive load at entry.

Business problem

Leadership wanted the homepage to signal a meaningful shift while supporting consideration and content revenue.

Product problem

One historically dominant workflow now had to coexist with two newer mental models.

Ownership &
Leadership

Owning the primary interaction while navigating product ambiguity

I collaborated most closely with the lead designer as three designers explored overall page structures. With limited product-management ownership, Design drove the process and stakeholder alignment. I personally owned the hero, its image animation, and the interaction model behind the Creative Command Bar.

Defined how Search, AI Search, and Generate worked together
Built interactive prototypes with Figma Make and Codex
Introduced the homepage image accordion component
Partnered with Search Engineering on hero behavior
Worked with Frontend Enablement on new and adapted design-system components

Research Changed
the Priority

The opportunity was clearer entry, not more capability

Competitive analysis, unmoderated usability testing, prototype validation, and analytics helped separate what customers understood from what they overlooked.

Standard search was already intuitive

Participants consistently completed familiar search tasks successfully. The redesign could not afford to obscure that strength.

AI Search lacked clarity

The new interaction needed stronger explanation and a more legible relationship to standard search.

Generate created excitement once understood

Discoverability was the larger problem for generative AI, not desirability.

The hero was underused

Only two of six participants naturally entered through the hero, focusing the redesign on visual hierarchy, affordance, and expectation setting.

Interaction
Strategy

Three creative workflows. One starting point.

The Creative Command Bar gave each workflow a distinct purpose while maintaining a shared interaction model across the homepage.

Search

Discover existing licensed content through the platform’s most familiar workflow.

AI Search

Explore with natural language and refine intent iteratively.

Generate

Create new content with AI while remaining connected to the broader platform.

Early Creative Command Bar interaction concept

Strategic Product
Decisions

Start with familiarity

Traditional search remained immediately recognizable so existing customers would not feel displaced by the new platform story.

Reveal capability progressively

Additional functionality appeared through interaction rather than competing for attention at first glance.

Give each workflow a distinct identity

The three modes communicated different starting points without appearing to be separate products.

Maintain continuity

Shared patterns reinforced that customers were still operating inside one creative platform.

Design
Exploration

Exploring breadth before converging on the interaction model

Three designers independently explored low-fidelity page structures before aligning with stakeholders on section order. We then compared medium-fidelity concepts by development effort and moved into high-fidelity hero iterations, unmoderated testing, and interactive prototypes.

I also proposed a “guided start” narrative: first help customers begin, then show what that starting point could become. Parts of that concept informed the final page, although the broader narrative combined ideas from multiple directions.

Earlier progressive disclosure concept — Earlier progressive-disclosure direction

Search-first concept with AI generation as an alternative — Search as the primary action with Generate as an alternate path

Side-by-side and tabbed homepage concepts — Side-by-side and tabbed interaction explorations

Scope &
Tradeoffs

Delivering a visible platform shift in one month

The first release had to communicate “Shutterstock has changed” while leaving Engineering enough time to build before the merger. That urgency made scope discipline as important as concept quality.

Reduced initial animation

Hero image and page-load motion were simplified to protect delivery time and implementation quality.

Deferred multimodal behavior

The Creative Command Bar could not yet support image or document input.

Worked within the CMS

The final page adapted to constraints in the existing publishing model.

Balanced capability with simplicity

Each tab received a distinct personality without exposing every possible control upfront.

Final
Experience

The launched homepage made multiple creative workflows visible from a single starting point. Search remained present, while AI Search and Generate established a new platform narrative supported by updated content hierarchy and richer visual storytelling.

Final Creative Command Bar experience

What Launch
Revealed

The platform story became broader, but the primary action became less obvious

Three weeks after launch, homepage search events had moved from 93.8K pre-launch to 73.0K, and the page search rate declined from 13.68% to 9.62%. AI Search remained extremely small, while Generate and Edit increased from 114 to 205 events from a very small base.

The downstream picture was more nuanced. For logged-in users who did begin search, search-to-asset-detail behavior remained stable: 75.1% before launch and 75.6% in week three. Search quality did not appear broken; fewer people were choosing to start from the homepage.

93.8K → 73.0Khomepage search events, pre-launch to week three

13.68% → 9.62%homepage search rate

75.1% → 75.6%logged-in search-to-asset-detail rate

These figures were an early directional read, not a final attribution study. The strongest working hypothesis was that the hero asked customers to process too many paths at once.

Retrospective

The homepage was not only a marketing surface; it taught customers how Shutterstock’s products related to one another. The project reinforced that expanding product perception and protecting task clarity must be evaluated together.

What the project established

A unified interaction model for three creative workflows
A visible shift from stock marketplace to broader creative platform
A fast, cross-functional path from concept to launch

What the next iteration needs

Strengthen the affordance and prominence of the primary search action
Reduce cognitive load in the side-by-side hero
Test interaction clarity before adding additional capability

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