Michael Estiban Smith
UX & Design Director
Krispy Kreme
Designing for two platforms, one seamless experience
Krispy Kreme wanted to close the gap between their iconic in-store experience and their digital presence — creating a seamless customer experience across every touchpoint.
What sounded like a brand and UX challenge quickly revealed itself to be something far more complex.
The US parent company was in the process of unifying the Krispy Kreme experience globally, including a replatform to a new same-day ordering solution. But the Australian business operates differently. The local ecommerce experience is integrated directly into production facilities — a deep technical dependency that would require significant unbundling to move to the global platform. A bespoke solution was needed. One that could bridge two fundamentally different technical environments without the customer ever feeling the join.
Platform
Adobe Commerce + same-day ordering platform
Role
UX & Design Director (leading a team)
Duration
Discovery through to full rollout
Outcome
Fully launched dual-platform experience delivering significant growth in ecommerce conversion, online revenue, and average transaction value
*Specific metrics cannot be shared.
The Challenge
The Australian business couldn't simply adopt the global platform. The existing Adobe Commerce implementation was woven directly into production and fulfilment operations — touching how orders were received, scheduled, and fulfilled at a facility level.
The same-day ordering platform was planned for gradual rollout, meaning all stores would begin on Adobe Commerce, with select stores progressively gaining same-day capability over time. The challenge was designing a single experience that could serve both realities — routing customers to the right platform based on their store and fulfilment choice, without exposing the complexity or creating confusion along the way.
Discover
Through stakeholder engagement and close collaboration with a business analyst who mapped the full technical and operational landscape, I gained a deep understanding of how the two platforms worked, where they diverged, and what constraints were non-negotiable. This gave us a clear picture of what the solution needed to accommodate before any design work began.
Define
The research surfaced a clear routing problem: the platform a customer needed depended entirely on which store they were ordering from, and the same-day rollout was gradual and ongoing. The proposed solution used store selection as the routing mechanism — customers would provide their location and select their fulfilment method on landing, directing them to the right platform dynamically and without friction.
Design
Working alongside a UI designer to help deliver the rollout, I led the redesign of the Adobe Commerce experience — a complete facelift leveraging the refreshed Krispy Kreme brand identity, improving the end-to-end journey from browsing through to checkout. The store-selection and routing flow was designed to feel like a natural first step — effortless for the customer, invisible in its complexity.
Outcome
The dual-platform solution launched fully across the Australian market, delivering significant growth across every key ecommerce metric — conversion, online revenue, and average transaction value all saw meaningful uplift. Krispy Kreme now operates a best-in-class ecommerce experience that honours the brand, serves the operational reality of the Australian business, and scales gracefully as the global same-day platform continues its rollout.
What I learned
The most interesting design problems aren't always about the interface. This project was fundamentally about making a complex technical reality invisible to the customer — designing a routing experience so natural that nobody would ever know two separate platforms were running underneath it. Great UX leadership means understanding the full system, not just the screens.
About
I'm a UX and design leader with 19 years of hands-on experience — from discovery and research through to interaction design, UI direction, and design systems. I lead from within the work, not above it.
I've spent the last eight years at Balance and Digitas Australia building and leading UX and design capability — growing practice, embedding research, and delivering across some of Australia's most recognised brands. That work contributed to Balance being awarded Campaign Agency of the Year in eCommerce in 2024, and Digitas Australia taking out the same award the following year.
Let's talk
If you're building a design-led digital practice and need someone who'll get into the work, raise the quality, and help shape where the agency goes next — I'd love to talk.
Get in Touch
Find me on LinkedIn
Krispy Kreme
Designing for two platforms, one seamless experience
Krispy Kreme wanted to close the gap between their iconic in-store experience and their digital presence — creating a seamless customer experience across every touchpoint.
What sounded like a brand and UX challenge quickly revealed itself to be something far more complex.
The US parent company was in the process of unifying the Krispy Kreme experience globally, including a replatform to a new same-day ordering solution. But the Australian business operates differently. The local ecommerce experience is integrated directly into production facilities — a deep technical dependency that would require significant unbundling to move to the global platform. A bespoke solution was needed. One that could bridge two fundamentally different technical environments without the customer ever feeling the join.
Platform
Adobe Commerce + same-day ordering platform
Role
UX & Design Director (leading a team)
Duration
Discovery through to full rollout
Outcome
Fully launched dual-platform experience delivering significant growth in ecommerce conversion, online revenue, and average transaction value
*Specific metrics cannot be shared.
The Challenge
The Australian business couldn't simply adopt the global platform. The existing Adobe Commerce implementation was woven directly into production and fulfilment operations — touching how orders were received, scheduled, and fulfilled at a facility level.
The same-day ordering platform was planned for gradual rollout, meaning all stores would begin on Adobe Commerce, with select stores progressively gaining same-day capability over time. The challenge was designing a single experience that could serve both realities — routing customers to the right platform based on their store and fulfilment choice, without exposing the complexity or creating confusion along the way.
Discover
Through stakeholder engagement and close collaboration with a business analyst who mapped the full technical and operational landscape, I gained a deep understanding of how the two platforms worked, where they diverged, and what constraints were non-negotiable. This gave us a clear picture of what the solution needed to accommodate before any design work began.
Define
The research surfaced a clear routing problem: the platform a customer needed depended entirely on which store they were ordering from, and the same-day rollout was gradual and ongoing. The proposed solution used store selection as the routing mechanism — customers would provide their location and select their fulfilment method on landing, directing them to the right platform dynamically and without friction.
Design
Working alongside a UI designer to help deliver the rollout, I led the redesign of the Adobe Commerce experience — a complete facelift leveraging the refreshed Krispy Kreme brand identity, improving the end-to-end journey from browsing through to checkout. The store-selection and routing flow was designed to feel like a natural first step — effortless for the customer, invisible in its complexity.
Outcome
The dual-platform solution launched fully across the Australian market, delivering significant growth across every key ecommerce metric — conversion, online revenue, and average transaction value all saw meaningful uplift. Krispy Kreme now operates a best-in-class ecommerce experience that honours the brand, serves the operational reality of the Australian business, and scales gracefully as the global same-day platform continues its rollout.
What I learned
The most interesting design problems aren't always about the interface. This project was fundamentally about making a complex technical reality invisible to the customer — designing a routing experience so natural that nobody would ever know two separate platforms were running underneath it. Great UX leadership means understanding the full system, not just the screens.
About
I'm a UX and design leader with 19 years of hands-on experience — from discovery and research through to interaction design, UI direction, and design systems. I lead from within the work, not above it.
I've spent the last eight years at Balance and Digitas Australia building and leading UX and design capability — growing practice, embedding research, and delivering across some of Australia's most recognised brands. That work contributed to Balance being awarded Campaign Agency of the Year in eCommerce in 2024, and Digitas Australia taking out the same award the following year.
Let's talk
If you're building a design-led digital practice and need someone who'll get into the work, raise the quality, and help shape where the agency goes next — I'd love to talk.
Get in Touch
Find me on LinkedIn
Krispy Kreme
Designing for two platforms, one seamless experience
Krispy Kreme wanted to close the gap between their iconic in-store experience and their digital presence — creating a seamless customer experience across every touchpoint.
What sounded like a brand and UX challenge quickly revealed itself to be something far more complex.
The US parent company was in the process of unifying the Krispy Kreme experience globally, including a replatform to a new same-day ordering solution. But the Australian business operates differently. The local ecommerce experience is integrated directly into production facilities — a deep technical dependency that would require significant unbundling to move to the global platform. A bespoke solution was needed. One that could bridge two fundamentally different technical environments without the customer ever feeling the join.
Platform
Adobe Commerce + same-day ordering platform
Role
UX & Design Director (leading a team)
Duration
Discovery through to full rollout
Outcome
Fully launched dual-platform experience delivering significant growth in ecommerce conversion, online revenue, and average transaction value
*Specific metrics cannot be shared.
The Challenge
The Australian business couldn't simply adopt the global platform. The existing Adobe Commerce implementation was woven directly into production and fulfilment operations — touching how orders were received, scheduled, and fulfilled at a facility level.
The same-day ordering platform was planned for gradual rollout, meaning all stores would begin on Adobe Commerce, with select stores progressively gaining same-day capability over time. The challenge was designing a single experience that could serve both realities — routing customers to the right platform based on their store and fulfilment choice, without exposing the complexity or creating confusion along the way.
Discover
Through stakeholder engagement and close collaboration with a business analyst who mapped the full technical and operational landscape, I gained a deep understanding of how the two platforms worked, where they diverged, and what constraints were non-negotiable. This gave us a clear picture of what the solution needed to accommodate before any design work began.
Define
The research surfaced a clear routing problem: the platform a customer needed depended entirely on which store they were ordering from, and the same-day rollout was gradual and ongoing. The proposed solution used store selection as the routing mechanism — customers would provide their location and select their fulfilment method on landing, directing them to the right platform dynamically and without friction.
Design
Working alongside a UI designer to help deliver the rollout, I led the redesign of the Adobe Commerce experience — a complete facelift leveraging the refreshed Krispy Kreme brand identity, improving the end-to-end journey from browsing through to checkout. The store-selection and routing flow was designed to feel like a natural first step — effortless for the customer, invisible in its complexity.
Outcome
The dual-platform solution launched fully across the Australian market, delivering significant growth across every key ecommerce metric — conversion, online revenue, and average transaction value all saw meaningful uplift. Krispy Kreme now operates a best-in-class ecommerce experience that honours the brand, serves the operational reality of the Australian business, and scales gracefully as the global same-day platform continues its rollout.
What I learned
The most interesting design problems aren't always about the interface. This project was fundamentally about making a complex technical reality invisible to the customer — designing a routing experience so natural that nobody would ever know two separate platforms were running underneath it. Great UX leadership means understanding the full system, not just the screens.
About
I'm a UX and design leader with 19 years of hands-on experience — from discovery and research through to interaction design, UI direction, and design systems. I lead from within the work, not above it.
I've spent the last eight years at Balance and Digitas Australia building and leading UX and design capability — growing practice, embedding research, and delivering across some of Australia's most recognised brands. That work contributed to Balance being awarded Campaign Agency of the Year in eCommerce in 2024, and Digitas Australia taking out the same award the following year.
Let's talk
If you're building a design-led digital practice and need someone who'll get into the work, raise the quality, and help shape where the agency goes next — I'd love to talk.
Get in Touch
Find me on LinkedIn