Product Design

Product Design Work

The website you are using right now (Carolyn’s Blooming Creations) was entirely ideated, designed and executed by me, Carolyn “C.J.” Braden.

Here’s a graphic image I created to showcase the process I used:

Here’s my product design process in written form:

From 2018 to 2022, I dedicated my time to turning my product, my own website carolynsbloomingcreations.com, which was merely a portfolio of elaborate cakes I created in 2006, into a monetized DIY and shopping platform for 1,000’s of international users to find simple answers to complex life problems, with a touch of happiness. During this time, I learned how to research on my own, creating user personas, user journey maps, problem statements, pain points and more to figure out who my audience was and what their needs were.

When I finally landed on the topic of DIY as the main focus of the site, and completed a competitive analysis of other DIY websites, while learning everything I could about SEO and marketing and conducted some of my own usability studies with my family and friends, I was able to take my site from 24 users a day to over 100 a day in a few months. While I know that is not very much traffic compared to large DIY websites like HGTV, I felt that I was still a success because I “moved the needle”.

This would not have happened if I didn’t do the work, the research and have quality content design. I am largely self-taught in this field, but know my work and educational background lend a hand in getting me to this point.

I continue to monitor the site’s analytics, create content (myself and with the help of external content creators) based on research, and make updates to make the platform easier to use.

Peruse CBC by using the Menu, located on the top of every page or start here on the home page.