Overview
Navigation is the skeleton of a product. Get it wrong and every feature built on top of it inherits the problem. For Seller Lab — a product that grew from a handful of tools to a complex platform spanning Catalog, Onboarding, Orders, Performance, and more — the navigation needed to scale with it.
This was one of the longest and most iterative projects I worked on. It involved not just designing a sidebar and toolbar, but rethinking how sellers should move through a platform that kept growing in complexity. The work happened in two distinct phases.
✓ Shipped
Nav v1 — Sidebar & Toolbar
The initial redesign of the Seller Lab navigation: a new sidebar structure, toolbar patterns, and information architecture. Designed solo and shipped.
Exploration
Nav Trials — Next Evolution
A joint effort exploring the next iteration of navigation as the platform continued to grow. Multiple rounds of back-and-forth exploring different structural approaches and interaction models. Not yet shipped.
The Problem
Navigation that couldn't keep up with the platform
As Seller Lab expanded, the navigation accumulated entries without a clear organising logic. Sellers — particularly new ones — struggled to find what they needed. The existing structure had been added to incrementally rather than designed holistically, and it showed.
The challenge wasn't just aesthetic. The navigation needed to handle a product that would continue to grow — which meant the structure needed logic that could accommodate future sections without breaking.
Process & Key Decisions
The logic behind the back-and-forth
This project involved more iteration than most — and that iteration was deliberate. Navigation decisions have product-wide implications, so each version was tested against real seller journeys before moving forward.
Decision 01
Organise by seller task — not by product team ownership
The previous navigation reflected how the internal team was structured, not how sellers think about their work. The redesign reorganised sections around seller jobs — "manage my products", "understand my performance", "get paid" — rather than internal product boundaries. This required cross-team alignment but produced a structure sellers could navigate without a map.
Decision 02
Design the sidebar to collapse gracefully — not just visually, but functionally
Sellers on smaller screens or with dense workflows needed more canvas space. A collapsible sidebar sounds simple, but every navigation state needed to work — hover labels, active states, nested sections, notification badges — all had to function correctly in both expanded and collapsed modes.
Decision 03
Use the toolbar for contextual actions — not permanent navigation
The toolbar and sidebar were blurring together, with both being used for navigation and actions in inconsistent ways. The redesign drew a clear line: the sidebar for navigation between sections, the toolbar for actions relevant to the current page. This reduced cognitive load and made both patterns more predictable.
Decision 04
Nav Trials: exploring what happens when the platform keeps growing
The Trials phase emerged because v1, while solid, was already being stressed by new product additions. The exploration tested fundamentally different structural approaches — tabbed navigation, contextual sidebars, hub-and-spoke models — to find a pattern that could scale further. This is where the real IA logic was stress-tested.
The Work
Key screens
📸 Nav v1 Sidebar — export a clean screen from Figma Nav v1 file
Nav v1 — Sidebar Design
Redesigned sidebar with task-based information architecture, collapsible states, and clear active/hover patterns. Shipped.
📸 Nav Trials exploration — export from Figma Nav Trials file
Nav Trials — Structural Exploration
Multiple structural approaches tested across the Trials phase — exploring how the navigation could evolve as Seller Lab continues to grow.
Impact & Outcomes
A shipped v1 and an active exploration
✓
Nav v1 shipped and in active use across all Seller Lab products
2
Distinct phases — shipped v1 and ongoing Trials exploration
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Add metric — e.g. task completion rate, findability score, or seller feedback on navigation
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Add scale — e.g. number of sellers navigating via this system daily