Journal — Note 02 · Diary
Eleven weeks: a diary of the Hearthline build
8 min · Lucas Arden · Summer 2024
“Eleven weeks” sounds like a slogan, so here is the diary: what actually happened, week by week, between the first sketch and the launch of the Hearthline store. Slogans hide the deletions. This one had a big one.
Weeks 1–2: Listen
Two weeks of questions before a pixel. We sat in the Hearthline workshop, watched people buy nothing for hours, and learned the old store’s real problem: it fidgeted. Pop-ups over pop-ups, a carousel for everything, five anxious checkout steps for furniture with a ten-year guarantee.
Weeks 3–5: Three directions
Three full directions, argued properly. The survivor was the quietest: products sit still, everything else glides. One calm product frame; filters that crossfade; a cart that slides instead of shouts. The client picked it in one meeting, which made us suspicious — correctly.
Week 6: The deletion
Testing showed the surviving direction still carried the old store’s anxiety in its corners: badges, upsells, a loyalty nudge nobody asked for. So we deleted half the interface in four days — forty screens to nineteen. The founder went pale, then quiet, then said the thing you dream of hearing: “It finally feels like our furniture.”
Weeks 7–10: Build
Design moved into the browser and stayed there. Real content from week seven — actual oak, actual prices — because placeholder text lies about density. Checkout went from five steps to two somewhere in week eight, and nobody has asked for the other three since.
Week 11: Launch, then stay
Launch morning was boring, which is the compliment. Then we stayed the season after, watching sessions and tightening: a faster image pipeline, a calmer empty cart, delivery dates set in the same serif as the wordmark. The case study calls it eleven weeks. Honestly, it never quite ended — and that is the arrangement we recommend.