Experiments
A collection of UI patterns and experiments, designed by me and built with Codex.
Shopify Onboarding
Lead Designer · 2025
I redesigned Shopify’s onboarding around a visual, evolving representation of the merchant’s store. It helps people understand progress and gives each completed step a sense of consequence.
The work was shaped closely with engineering, product and data partners, moving from rough prototypes to experiments inside the product.
Outcomes
+1.8% conversion · +1.2% retention · +14% activity
Shopify Setup Guide
Lead Designer · 2025
I led the design of a persistent side panel that helps new merchants choose the right next step without losing the context of their work.
The system adapts its guidance as a store gets closer to launch. The challenge was to make it helpful without making the interface feel like a checklist.
Outcomes
+2.4% conversion · +1.7% retention · +26% activity
TeacherGPT
Co-Founder & Lead Designer
- paid users
- 1,400+
- resources created
- 500,000+
Website
A welcoming introduction to TeacherGPT, made for teachers in Aotearoa.
Iconography
A distinctive family of icons brings consistency and personality to the product.
Dashboard
A clear starting point for creating classroom resources, planning lessons, or asking a question.
Navigation
Projects, pinned resources, and recent chats keep everyday work close at hand.
Chat
From a simple prompt to a classroom-ready resource, with quick ways to refine, download, and share.
Library
Resources in one place, with filters and previews to make finding and reusing work easy.
About me
I’m a product designer from New Zealand and co-founder of TeacherGPT. I spent 8 years in Growth at Shopify, helping new users onboarding to the platform, set up their stores, and launch. I believe in good design that has a real, measurable impact. We should take pride in what we create.
Since leaving Shopify I have been focused on TeacherGPT, an AI-powered platform for primary school teachers.
I whole heartedly believe that great teams make great products, and that designers play a unique and integral role in software -- aligning people to a common goal, and visualising the vision.
About this site
This site is a place to explore my experience, resume, and a few experiments in interaction design. TeacherGPT is where the bulk of my work lives.
My earlier Shopify work lives in Shopify’s Figma, so I built this desktop as a small, interactive sample of how I design. Everything here was designed by me in Figma or Codex (excluding the "Illustration" background, which was generated from a photograph).
Kelly Jepsen
Product Designer · New Zealand
Currently building TeacherGPT.
- 2020–2026 Shopify Staff Product Designer
- 2019–2020 MYOB Senior Product Designer
- 2018–2019 Shopify Senior Product Designer
- 2016–2017 MYOB Senior Product Designer
- 2015–2016 Figured UX Designer
- 2014–2015 MYOB UX Designer
- 2013–2017 writr Lead Designer
- 2013–2014 LayerX UI/UX Designer
- 2012–2013 theCloud Systems
- 2011–2012 Emblems NZ Designer
I joined Shopify at the beginning of 2018 in the Logistics team, focused on fulfilment: helping merchants get orders sent and delivered to their customers.
A big part of my work was redesigning the Order Index, one of the busiest pages in the Shopify Admin. The redesign gave merchants the flexibility to see the exact information they needed to make picking and packing decisions about each order. I took the project through customer research, exploration, prototyping, and execution, collaborating across disciplines and teams at Shopify.
I then moved into Shopify’s Growth organisation, joining the first team dedicated to helping merchants onboard to the platform. My work ranged from sign-up, where we collected and responded to the right information about new merchants, through to helping them set up product catalogues, design their online stores, and make their first sales.
I spent seven years in this space, growing from Designer to Senior Designer, then Staff Designer. I led many projects from initial idea to launch, introducing new initiatives and novel approaches to longstanding problems. That work shaped the experience for new merchants and laid foundations for future teams at Shopify.
One of my most notable achievements was a complete redesign of the onboarding tasks for new merchants, something that hadn’t changed in ten years despite many attempts. I also designed a persistent side panel that kept merchants aware of and focused on their current tasks while setting up a store. That design pattern eventually became the foundation for Sidekick, Shopify’s AI agent.
My time in Growth exposed me to intentional, data-driven design, for better or for worse. I learnt a tonne about working with data, designing experiments, ideation, and product strategy. I learnt how to align stakeholders across teams and at every level of the company. Most importantly, I learnt how design can make a real difference.
TeacherGPT is my main focus and the work that best represents me as a product designer. Since leaving Shopify in April 2026, I’ve spent almost all my time building its brand and product.
I’m responsible for every bit of design across TeacherGPT, from the logo and branding to marketing materials, emails, newsletters, our websites, and the app itself.
TeacherGPT started as an opportunistic side project. My brother-in-law and I saw an opportunity to build a wrapper around ChatGPT for our own family: our wives and brothers were teachers. What started as “just a wrapper” quickly grew into a suite of bespoke tools for teachers in New Zealand and Australia. What began with friends and family using it has grown to over 1,400 teachers.
We’ve been working with local schools and teachers across the country, improving and growing TeacherGPT around the things they need in their classrooms.
An archive of old side projects, and various pieces of work.
- The Tour ↗ · Book cover
- Occamise ↗ · Identity
- G-Castle ↗ · Identity
- FPS Kelly ↗ · YouTube & streaming
- Foodee ↗ · Restaurant order-management app
- White Lies ↗ · Book cover
- writr ↗ · Journaling app
I'm always open to interesting conversations and new opportunities.
Email
LinkedIn
Kelly Jepsen (opens in a new tab)
Location
Hamilton, New Zealand
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