Postcards Creation Experience
Designing an end-to-end postcard creation experience focused on speed, simplicity, and joyful personalisation.
Executive Summary
I designed the end-to-end postcard creation flow for Thortful, a digital card marketplace, as part of a new feature launch. The focus was on creating a fast, intuitive, and playful flow that allowed users to personalise postcards without feeling overwhelmed by choice. The experience balanced creative flexibility with simplicity, supporting a quick MVP launch and real user testing while staying aligned with Thortful’s brand and visual language.
Role: Head of UX/UI
Platform: iOS app
Focus: New feature launch · Creation tools · Personalisation
Context
As Thortful grew rapidly, the team began exploring new product types that could expand the catalogue while staying true to the brand’s playful, personal nature.
Postcards emerged as one of these opportunities. Unlike traditional greeting cards, postcards required a more visual creation experience, where users could personalise quickly while keeping the flow fast, simple, and enjoyable.
Goal
Design and launch a postcard creation experience that allowed users to personalise a postcard quickly and enjoyably, with minimal friction, while validating product interest with real users.
Success looked like
A fast, intuitive creation flow
Low cognitive load despite multiple customisation options
A product ready to ship and test with real users
Strong alignment with Thortful’s playful brand and visual language
Designing and launching the MVP
Postcards were designed and launched as a new product, so speed, clarity, and real-world validation mattered from day one. I designed the full end-to-end creation experience, focusing on making the flow intuitive, playful, and easy to use, while ensuring it could be shipped and tested quickly.
Design decisions were guided by rapid iteration, early feedback, and close collaboration with product and engineering, ensuring a high-quality experience that stayed true to Thortful’s brand and visual standards.
From exploration to definition
Before moving into visual design, I explored the postcard creation experience through early sketches, co-design sessions with users and the team, and flow mapping.
This phase helped define the overall structure of the experience, the key steps in the journey, and how personalisation tools should be introduced progressively before moving into wireframes and UI design.
Designing the creation flow
The main challenge was supporting creative expression without slowing the journey down. Instead of exposing all tools at once, personalisation options were introduced progressively, helping users stay focused and maintain momentum throughout the experience.
The creation flow was shaped around a small set of guiding principles:
Create a sense of ownership early by starting with image selection
Provide light structure through templates without limiting creativity
Keep visual adjustments fast and easy to preview
Make personalisation feel playful, not overwhelming
Always keep the next step clear
The final MVP flow
The final MVP flow brought these principles together into a fast, playful creation experience, allowing users to personalise a postcard with confidence and minimal friction.
Testing the MVP
Before launching postcards more widely, the MVP was tested with real users through hands-on sessions followed by a short survey. The goal was to validate whether the creation flow felt fast, intuitive, and enjoyable, while confirming that the personalisation tools were easy to use.
Overall experience
Over 85% of participants rated their experience buying a postcard 5 out of 5, with the remaining responses mostly scoring 4 out of 5. This showed strong confidence in the flow and confirmed that users could personalise and purchase a postcard without friction.
What users said:
“Quick and easy to use”
“Very quick and easy to use. I really liked it”
“Very simple and straightforward”
“Fast and intuitive”
“One of the best experiences I’ve had using the app”
Personalisation features
Personalisation tools such as image selection, text, borders, stickers, and filters were consistently rated 4 or 5 out of 5. Users found the features easy to understand and apply without slowing down the journey.
What users said about the features:
“Very easy to use”
“These features are very easy to use and the result is really great!”
“Simple and great fun”
“Easy, intuitive and creative”
“Awesome and really enjoyable”
Key takeaway
The testing validated the core design decisions behind the postcards MVP. Users experienced the flow as fast, intuitive, and playful, with low cognitive load despite multiple customisation options. This gave the team confidence to move forward with launch and future iterations..
Launch & next steps
The postcards feature was launched as a new product, allowing the team to observe real-world usage, gather feedback, and iterate based on how customers used the experience in practice.
Beyond the initial launch, this work helped establish a clear and scalable foundation for introducing new product types within the app. The patterns, principles, and learnings from postcards directly informed the development of subsequent products, including Photocards, which went on to become another successful addition to Thortful’s catalogue.
This approach enabled the team to expand the product offering with confidence, while maintaining a consistent, intuitive experience across different formats and levels of personalisation.