Website Builder
The site-building tool that laid the UX foundation for WordPress.com's AI website builder. From intent to published — in fewer steps, with less friction.
The challenge
Creating a website should feel empowering, not overwhelming. The existing site creation flow had grown complex — too many steps, too many decisions upfront. We needed to simplify the journey from intent to published site, and build it in a way that could later support AI-driven creation.
The approach
I designed a progressive creation flow that starts with intent rather than technical choices. Instead of "pick a theme," we asked "what do you want your site to do?" This reframing reduced cognitive load and organized the builder around goals, not features. The architecture was deliberately modular — which later let the AI builder slot in as an alternative creation path without rebuilding the core experience.
Key decisions
Inline editing over settings panels wherever possible — users see changes in context, not in abstract forms. We reduced the initial setup from 8 steps to 3, front-loading the decisions that matter most and deferring the rest. Templates were designed as starting points, not constraints — every template could be fully deconstructed and rebuilt by the user.