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AI Bold Bets
Canadian Tire
2026
Role
Senior Product & Experience Designer
Duration
12 weeks
OVERVIEW
the project
Customers pieced together research, lists, costs and purchases across channels, losing context as they moved from planning to shopping. Canadian Tire needed a future-facing AI experience that could build trust and demonstrate value without promising capabilities its complex retail ecosystem could not realistically support.
We shifted the unit of experience from the product to the project. I designed Compass as a persistent mission workspace with editable shopping lists, budget controls, product comparisons and contextual guidance. AI could propose, but customers retained control; automation such as “Shop for me” was opt-in. Across seven prototype flows, testing led us to reduce upfront questions, keep Compass accessible within a mission and connect plans more directly to products in the cart.
The high-fidelity Figma prototype supported concept testing with 12 Canadian Tire customers and executive alignment. The engagement produced North Star designs, journey and opportunity framing, and a value case with an implementation roadmap, giving Canadian Tire a concrete experience direction to evaluate, validate and build toward.
AI Bold Bets
I was the primary hands-on UX/UI owner, shaping concepts, journeys, interactions, reusable components and all prototype screens and flows. I collaborated across experience leadership, strategy, AI product, technology and research; reviewed testing recordings and transcripts; incorporated findings; and created walkthroughs, storytelling GIFs and presentation materials. A UI designer contributed the Compass brand icon, and experience leadership delivered the final executive presentation.
Using AI broadened exploration faster than it narrowed it. The challenge became synthesis: verifying sources, choosing defensible ideas and making emerging logic visible to the team. Next time, I would introduce explicit synthesis checkpoints earlier so collaborators could shape the direction before the whole experience was assembled.
