Designing an online shop for Ukrainian embroidered clothing that feels like contemporary fashion, not a museum.
Overview
The vyshyvanka is one of Ukraine's strongest symbols of identity. Most stores that sell it look like souvenir shops: cluttered pages, generic categories, and no context about where a pattern comes from. I designed Nytka end to end, from research to a working, responsive storefront.
01 · Discover
6
User interviews
With diaspora and Ukraine-based shoppers aged 22–45.
48
Survey responses
Covering buying habits, trust, and price expectations.
5
Competitor audits
Covering heritage stores and minimal fashion labels.
Key insights
I used affinity mapping to cluster interview notes and survey answers into four recurring themes.
Shoppers pick a vyshyvanka by region and pattern meaning, but stores only filter by size and colour.
Busy, ornamental interfaces made products feel cheap and hard to compare.
People wanted to know the story behind a piece before paying a premium for it.
Many buyers wanted their purchase to support Ukraine, but couldn’t verify that it did.
02 · Define
Persona
Olena, 29
Designer, living in Berlin
“I want a vyshyvanka from my grandmother’s region that I’d actually wear to work. I don’t know where to find one, and I can’t tell what’s authentic.”
Goals
Authentic regional pieces, modern cuts, buying that gives back.
Frustrations
Cluttered stores, no context, unclear quality and origin.
How might we
…help shoppers find a vyshyvanka by its region and story, in an interface as calm as a modern fashion label?
03 · Ideate
Card sorting
Five participants grouped 30 products. Most sorted by region before garment type, so region became a top-level filter.
Lean navigation
Three main links (Shop, About, Contact) plus account, favourites, and cart icons keep attention on the products.
Low-fi wireframes
I sketched three filter layouts: top bar, sidebar, and slide-over drawer. The drawer kept the grid full width on every screen size.
04 · Design
Linen
#F8F7F3
Ink
#272524
Embroidery red
#B8322A
Type & ornament
Аа Nn
Three colours from black-and-red cross-stitch, one wide display face with full Cyrillic support, and a single row of stitched diamonds as the only decoration in the interface.
Shop: browse by region, not just by menu
The slide-over drawer filters by category, who it's for, and regional embroidery. Each region has a one-line description of its style.
Product: every piece has a story
Colour and size selection sit above a short story about where the pattern comes from, which addresses the trust gap from research.
05 · Test & iterate
Moderated sessions on desktop and mobile. Task: find a Hutsul-style shirt under $250 and add it to the cart.
5/5
completed the task
<90s
avg. time to cart
Testers didn’t know what the regional filter names meant.
→ Added a one-line style description under each region.
Testers lost track of saved items when they moved between pages.
→ Put favourites in a tab inside the cart, next to the bag.
The 10% donation was easy to miss.
→ Showed it as its own line in the order summary.
