About the Project
Proof by Southern Glazer's: B2B e-commerce for beverage distribution
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Overview
Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits is North America's largest distributor of beverage alcohol, serving thousands of on-premise and off-premise retailers across the United States and Canada. As part of the company's digital transformation initiative, I led product design for the native mobile experience of Proof, a B2B e-commerce platform that enables distributors to browse products, discover new inventory, and place orders from anywhere.
The engagement spanned 18 months, beginning with the creation of a scalable design system before transitioning into product leadership for the mobile application. Working alongside executive leadership and cross-functional teams, we established a mobile-first vision that complemented the existing web platform while creating a faster, more intuitive purchasing experience for enterprise customers.
Design system components and documentation
My Role
This was a staff augmentation role in which I served as the Product Design Lead for the Proof mobile application, partnering directly with the VP of Product, VP of Design, Director of Design, Product Owners, Engineering Leads, and User Research throughout the engagement.
My responsibilities included leading product strategy and UX for the mobile experience, designing the Homepage, Discover experience, Product Detail Pages, and the initial Search experience, while also providing creative direction and design oversight for Barcode Scanning, Biometric Login, and AI-powered recommendations.
Beyond individual feature work, I managed a client-side product designer, facilitated design reviews, aligned multiple scrum teams around a shared product vision, and ensured the mobile experience remained cohesive with the broader Proof ecosystem being developed across three parallel web teams.
Team structure and enterprise ecosystem
The Challenge
Proof had already established itself as a powerful B2B e-commerce platform on the web, but the way customers worked had changed. Retail buyers, bar managers, and liquor store owners increasingly needed to manage purchasing decisions while walking store aisles, checking inventory, meeting with sales representatives or preparing for deliveries, not sitting behind a desktop computer.
The challenge wasn't simply to adapt an existing website for a smaller screen. We needed to rethink enterprise purchasing for mobile while maintaining consistency with an established product ecosystem already serving thousands of customers.
At the same time, multiple product teams were developing the web platform in parallel. Design decisions made by one team often affected another, making cross-functional alignment just as critical as the user experience itself. Success depended on creating a mobile experience that felt purpose-built for the realities of on-the-go purchasing while supporting long-term scalability across the entire product ecosystem.
A clickable prototype that was built and tested with real customers to collect feedback.
Roadmapping workshop to understand pros and cons of various paths
Discovery, Strategy & Vision
Our work began with understanding how customers actually purchased products throughout their day. Partnering closely with the User Research team, we reviewed existing research, customer feedback, and stakeholder insights to identify where mobile could create the greatest value.
These findings revealed that speed, clarity, and continuity mattered more than feature parity with the desktop experience. Customers needed to quickly discover products, access key information, and complete orders with minimal friction, often while multitasking in busy retail environments.
These insights informed four guiding principles that shaped every design decision throughout the project:
Design for speed, reducing unnecessary steps and surfacing the most relevant information first.
Encourage product discovery, using merchandising, recommendations, and curated content to support both customer goals and business objectives.
Maintain ecosystem consistency, ensuring the mobile application felt like a natural extension of the existing Proof platform.
Build for scale, establishing reusable interaction patterns and design components that could support future product growth without requiring significant redesign.
Rather than approaching each feature independently, we used these principles as a strategic framework for every product decision.
A section of the Proof mobile app map focused on the Scan & Go feature
The Process
The design process emphasized collaboration, iteration, and continuous alignment across product, engineering, and research.
We first established the foundational navigation, interaction patterns, and reusable components that would support the entire application, building upon the design system developed during the first phase of the engagement. This foundation enabled the team to move quickly while maintaining consistency across future releases.
From there, I led the design of the application's core customer journeys, including the Homepage, Discover experience, Product Detail Pages, and the initial Search strategy. Each feature was iteratively refined through stakeholder reviews, cross-functional collaboration, and ongoing feedback from research and engineering.
In addition to the features I designed directly, I provided creative direction and design oversight for Barcode Scanning, Biometric Login, and AI-powered recommendations. Working closely with another product designer, I helped ensure these experiences aligned with the broader product vision while maintaining consistency across the growing ecosystem.
Throughout the engagement, collaboration remained central to the process. Product strategy evolved through regular workshops, design critiques, engineering discussions, and executive reviews, allowing business goals, technical constraints, and user needs to shape the product together rather than through sequential handoffs.
Completed screens that launched in August 2025
Outcome & Results
The project established the foundation for Southern Glazer's native mobile commerce experience while strengthening collaboration across an increasingly complex product organization.
The engagement delivered end-to-end mobile experiences for several of the platform's highest-value customer journeys, including Homepage, Discover, and Product Detail Pages, while defining scalable interaction patterns that continue to support future feature development.
By aligning design decisions across multiple scrum teams, we created a more cohesive experience between mobile and web while reducing fragmentation across the broader Proof ecosystem. The work also strengthened collaboration between Product, Design, Engineering, and User Research, creating shared ownership throughout the development process and enabling more informed product decisions.
While many business metrics remained confidential, the continued expansion of the platform and sustained executive trust throughout the engagement reflected the success of both the product strategy and the collaborative design approach.
Leadership Lessons & Key Takeaways
This project reinforced that effective design leadership extends far beyond producing strong interfaces. Some of my most meaningful contributions came from facilitating difficult conversations, building trust through honest communication, and helping diverse teams move toward a shared vision despite competing priorities. The relationships I built, particularly with executive leadership, reminded me that credibility is earned through transparency, thoughtful storytelling, and a consistent focus on solving the right problems rather than simply delivering features.