Katherine Robinson — Design Leader

Path

From one team to two organizations

2018

Product Design Manager

Led teams such as Trial Experience and Checkout where we introduced foundational onboarding flows and Universal Checkout.

2019

Built Growth

Recruited and hired the Growth design team from scratch. As part of this, I overhauled the hiring process with recruiting partners.

2023

Accelerated Growth

Launched Blueprint AI and united the end-to-end journey, from first visit through trial and onboarding, into a single growth engine.

2024

Took on Websites

Added the core editor to my scope, where I partnered with my VP of product to expand a cohesive AI and platform strategy across both orgs.

Scope

The journey I owned,
end to end

My scope spanned Growth and Websites: from the moment someone discovers Squarespace, through getting started, to how they create and edit their website every day. Our strategy was a product that learns about each person and reflects it back, so we designed every stage as one connected system rather than separate funnels.

squarespace.com homepage: A website makes it real

Land

First impression

squarespace.com
Product and persona pages
Annual Refresh launch
Global Navigation
Pricing Page

Blueprint AI suggesting site goals for an interior design business

Start

Getting started

Template Store
Designer Templates
Dynamic Templates
Blueprint AI

Orient

Finding the way

In-product Navigation
Global Settings
Home Dashboard
AIO/SEO Landing
System of Landings
Setup Guides
Beacon AI (AI chat)

Build

Making it theirs

Website Editor
Transitions & Animations
Brand Styles
Pro & DIY Tools
AI Image Studio

The growth engineSignals from each stage, like goals, business type and progress, personalize the next step.

ORG STRUCTURE

A lean management layer with senior ICs close to the work

Senior ICs, managed directly

Senior ICs reported directly to me, so I could staff them against top priorities as needs changed.

Growing ICs to Principal

I promoted a Senior Staff designer to Principal after three years of outstanding work.

Systems as well as surfaces

Close partnership with Design Platform held craft infrastructure and product work to one quality bar.

Katherine Robinson — Product designer Content designer Design technologist Staff level and above Partner

Key partnership and collaboration across disciplines ProductEngineeringMarketingBrand CreativeProduct Analytics

Selected Work

Selected projects

The range of work coming from the teams I oversaw was especially vast and ranged from brand design, template design, guided flows, AI native experiences, editorial experiences, navigation paradigms and detailed UI panels. Behind each experience was a robust design system to enforce consistency.

Jump to case studies ↓

Beacon AI

Squarespace’s in-product AI assistant. Smart suggestions meet each person where they are, from “What should I do first?” to setting up payments, so getting help never means leaving the product.

Core ExperienceAI Native

Refresh 2025

Squarespace's annual product launch campaign, telling the year's story on one immersive page that brought 60+ new features together for customers and press.

FrontsiteBrand Design

Setup Guide

A personalized checklist on the Home dashboard that walks new customers through setting up their site and business, grouped by goal with visible progress, so they always know what to do next.

Core ExperienceOnboardingContent Design

Image Studio AI: start creating with example prompts and a prompt field

AI Image Studio

AI image generation built into the website builder, so people can create on-brand imagery without leaving their site.

WebsitesAI NativeDesign Quality

Blueprint AI

An AI-guided start where new customers describe their business and goals in their own words, and Squarespace builds a personalized site to begin from instead of a blank template.

ConversionOnboardingAI Native

SEO and AI Visibility dashboard showing SEO score and an AI visibility check

AIO/SEO Visibility

One place for sellers to track their SEO and see how their brand shows up in AI chat responses, with clear next steps to improve both.

Core ExperienceAI Awareness

Template Detail Page

Where people preview a template, try its color palettes and font packs, and start a trial with a design that already feels like theirs.

ConversionOnboarding

Website editor Design panel with layout controls for direction, position, gap, padding, stacking, stroke and corners

Stacks

Groups and stacks let people organize blocks within a section and control their size and spacing, so layouts keep the design intent and resize predictably on tablet and mobile.

WebsitesLayout Systems

Squarespace website editor: shape design panel open on an About page

Website Editor: Transforms and Animations

Block Transforms and Block Animations unlock expressive layouts and interactive effects like hover, scroll, reactive cursor and ambient loops. DIY customers start from presets, while Pros create their own.

WebsitesInteraction Design

Case study · Frontsite

Making the marketing site work like a product

squarespace.com is where most people meet Squarespace. We treated it as a product surface that has to explain a growing platform, not just advertise it.

Surface: Homepage, product and persona pages, navigation, annual Refresh
My role: Set the Frontsite design model and led a cross-functional practice with Brand Creative, Marketing, Research, Accessibility and Localization
Timeline: 2019 – 2026

Surfaces

squarespace.com global navigation menu: Squarespace for Education & Training — Navigation

How we got there

01
Reframe
Designed a site paradigm that treats squarespace.com as a product surface, built on shared page systems. What was once five pages with one way into the funnel became hundreds of pages with many ways in.
02
Celebrate
A unique collaboration between Frontsite and Brand Creative, Refresh turned each year's product strategy into a story told in the Squarespace brand. Refresh 2025 put 60+ new features in context on one immersive page.
03
Scale
Built persona pages with AI-generated imagery and content, so instead of a handful of hero personas, customers from hundreds of verticals could see themselves and their business reflected on the site.

squarespace.com persona page for interior designers with an AI prompt to describe your business

Case study · Blueprint AI

Starting every site from what the customer tells us

A wall of templates asked new customers to picture their site before they knew what they needed. Blueprint AI starts with a short conversation about their business and goals, then builds a personalized starting point they can make their own.

Surface: Template selection → personalized site generation
My role: Guided the strategy, gave feedback throughout, kept the work connected to partner teams, and secured the right resourcing
Timeline: 2021 – 2026

Blueprint AI conversation summarizing the customer's topic and goals, then offering designer templates or an AI-built starting point — **01 · Ask**Replaced the blank template browse with a short conversation about the customer's business, goals and style.

Blueprint AI building a homepage, recommending sections like Intro, Services, Scheduling and Footer based on site goals — **02 · Generate**Generated a custom site customers could then shape, from homepage sections and pages to colors and fonts.

Blueprint AI recommending pages for a new site, with live previews of the Homepage, About and Contact pages — **03 · Scale**Built a library of AI imagery matched to hundreds of verticals, so every site truly represents the business.

Outcomes

30KSubscriptions from Blueprint AI

$21MLifetime value from those subscriptions

TIMEBest Inventions of 2025

Case study · Core Experience

Turning a blank page into a guided start

New users landed in a powerful editor with no sense of where to go, the range of actions they could do, or even what to do first. Over many iterations, we learned how guidance should work where a home dashboard provided clarity and focus.

Surface: Trial Onboarding → Home Dashboard
My role: Set the vision, framed the questions, enforced the need for a flexible content model and held the quality bar
Timeline: 2023 – 2026

Outcomes

Seller activation

+12%

Physical products added

+18%

Service products created

+33%

Invoices created

+44%

Team outcomes from the Setup Guide workstream, 2024.

How we got there

01
Learn
The first setup wizard showed no overall lift, but first-time users moved faster. We kept the learning.
02
Reframe
Guidance became its own product surface: personalized steps, contextual help, visible progress.
03
Scale
The Setup Guide reached 28% of new users and lifted international domain purchases 18%.

Squarespace Home dashboard with the Setup Guide: personalized setup steps with progress, a site preview card, and AI tools

How I lead

Set the vision, ask good questions, hold the bar

Point to a clear future

With my product partner, I set a yearly vision for what the product should feel like, then framed the problems that move each team toward it.

Explore before deciding

Teams bring back a range of solutions, not one answer. Exploring widely kept us from locking in on the first idea.

Hold the bar, share the impact

Critique, leadership reviews and launch readiness keep quality high. Results and learning go back to the CPO and founder.

The systems behind it

How We WorkAn operating model built on scope, predictability and alignment: a living product brief, standard reviews and a shared tracker.

Design phasesDiscoveryConceptingDetailed designQALaunch

Team playbookIntake, staffing, timelines, critique and launch readiness in one wiki, so new designers are productive quickly.

AI in every phaseAI isn't something we add at the end. It's part of how the work gets made. My teams use it to widen the brainstorm, synthesize research faster, move from idea to working prototype sooner, and pressure-test builds before launch. That frees designers to spend their time on judgment, taste and the problems only people can solve.