We turn your complex workflows into clear, usable experiences

Your software helps users accomplish complex tasks.
We design efficient in-product and support experiences so they can get back to work, fast.

Trusted by

You had the courage to ask hard questions. You showed empathy for customer needs. You asked why? Or why not? I am grateful for your collaboration and your patience with a complicated process and your ability to pivot with changing conditions.

Renee Anderson

Design Research & Strategy

You had the courage to ask hard questions. You showed empathy for customer needs. You asked why? Or why not? I am grateful for your collaboration and your patience with a complicated process and your ability to pivot with changing conditions.

Renee Anderson

Design Research & Strategy

You had the courage to ask hard questions. You showed empathy for customer needs. You asked why? Or why not? I am grateful for your collaboration and your patience with a complicated process and your ability to pivot with changing conditions.

Renee Anderson

Design Research & Strategy

Problems we solve

Product design, UX research, and content strategy challenges

Users struggle to learn your product

Onboarding drop-off is high. Users aren’t engaging with your product's own help system and tutorials.

Users can't find answers

Your documentation is extensive, but support tickets are piling up for questions that are already answered.

You need to understand your audience

You're building something great but haven't validated it with the people who'd actually use it.

Services

How to work with us

UX Assessment

Quick insights + prioritized recommendations so you can tackle the low hanging fruit.

5 business days

Fractional/Retainer

We work best when we’re embedded on your team on a full or part time basis. Best when you need a design lead for a few sprints.

3 month minimum

Workshops

Understand how your customers experience your product or service, from pre-purchase to upgrade.

Half or full day

Got a product or small business idea and need help bringing your vision to life?
I take these engagements on a selective basis. Get in touch to discuss.

Got a product or small business idea and need help bringing your vision to life?
I take these engagements on a selective basis. Get in touch to discuss.

Got a product or small business idea and need help bringing your vision to life?
I take these engagements on a selective basis. Get in touch to discuss.

Featured Work

Success stories

Reducing support agent case load with improved navigation and information architecture

  • Conducted interviews with internal SMEs and facilitated workshops to reach alignment on business goals, user needs, and project scope

  • Defined a content model and redesigned navigation, collaborating with a visual designer to create design system patterns and AEM components

  • Collaborated with web optimization team to run a series of A/B tests and iterate on solutions

10% increase in aggregate CES, 92% average increase in CTR on navigational links, and 53% average decrease in support case creation from those pages

UX design

UX research

design system

B2B

Empowering industrial design students with contextual in-product learning

  • Collaborated with content strategy to audit existing help & learning content

  • Conducted a competitive analysis of existing learning panels and software tutorials for a variety of design tools

  • Interviewed users to learn about desired features, existing pain pointsDesigned a modularized framework intended to scale across devices and platforms

"I hope they put more work into this because it's really good if you're a beginner!" —customer feedback

UX design

product design

SaaS

B2B

The design layouts you're creating for the core features will be instrumental to the product teams adopting our solution ... the toolkit is already an invaluable resource.

Judy Bayne

Principal Experience Researcher, Autodesk

The design layouts you're creating for the core features will be instrumental to the product teams adopting our solution ... the toolkit is already an invaluable resource.

Judy Bayne

Principal Experience Researcher, Autodesk

The design layouts you're creating for the core features will be instrumental to the product teams adopting our solution ... the toolkit is already an invaluable resource.

Judy Bayne

Principal Experience Researcher, Autodesk

Clarifying the product vision and roadmap for a climate tech startup via user research

  • Conducted user research to identify and understand beachhead market segment and determine highest value Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)

  • Coached UX interns through analysis of research findings and presentations to key stakeholders

Research insights informed the product vision & roadmap for a platform to help project developers working on climate positive projects scale faster and operate better

UX research

startup

climate tech

Supporting sustainable textile practices with service design mapping

  • Facilitated discovery and research synthesis workshops with TRW leadership and investors

  • Contextual inquiry at the TRW factory, interviewing employees and documenting pain points in the textile renewal and ecommerce flows

  • Created service maps and RFP requirements for a bespoke inventory management solution

TRW continued to grow their business, partnering with major outdoor brands and was acquired by supply chain experts Bleckmann to enable scaling their textile renewal services

UX research

service design

startup

sustainability

It's great to collaborate on projects with Rebecca as she continually focuses on minimizing complexity while striving for simplicity (and always keeps the customer/audience at the center of what we're working on). Bravo!

Rich Schwerin

Senior Content Strategist, Bay Area Content Marketing Meetup

It's great to collaborate on projects with Rebecca as she continually focuses on minimizing complexity while striving for simplicity (and always keeps the customer/audience at the center of what we're working on). Bravo!

Rich Schwerin

Senior Content Strategist, Bay Area Content Marketing Meetup

It's great to collaborate on projects with Rebecca as she continually focuses on minimizing complexity while striving for simplicity (and always keeps the customer/audience at the center of what we're working on). Bravo!

Rich Schwerin

Senior Content Strategist, Bay Area Content Marketing Meetup

About

Shorebird Design is a product design & UX research studio based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Shorebird Design is a product design & UX research studio based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Founder Rebecca Hathaway has been creating high-impact experiences for complex learning platforms, enterprise software, and mission-driven organizations since 2012 (and building websites since the 90s). She's an information architect at heart who loves transforming sprawling sets of documentation and data into navigable systems. With a BA in English and MFA in Design, the experience of the written word will always be core to her design philosophy.

© 2026 Shorebird Design LLC

Hatched in 2023 in Berkeley, California

© 2026 Shorebird Design LLC

Hatched in 2023 in Berkeley, California

© 2026 Shorebird Design LLC

Hatched in 2023 in Berkeley, California