As fulltime product design lead, I worked to prioritize, plan, design, and execute on our biggest blocker to conversion – a mobile app. I led our effort - from specs to launch, functioning as lead designer and PM.

Within 4 months, we had an alpha, 2 months later - a beta in TestFlight with paying customers, and 3 months after that, an iOS app ready for the app store. Moving on to Android next!

Role

Head of Product Design & Project Manager

Client

Internal project to port over our webapp to a mobile platform.

Most Proud Of

Building the trust with stakeholders to allow us to work extremely agile with a small team, within a large company.

Phase 1 - Goals, Specs, & Scope

We knew that the number one reason users leave us for the competition was for lack of a mobile app. But beyond that, we had little detail into the expectations and robustness of the mobile feature set. So we went digging. We did a thorough competitive analysis and then an investigation of our own features. We mapped out a plan to build an MVP that we could test iteratively with users. Then we put together some rough criteria for alpha, beta, and an app store launch.

Phase 2 - Sketches, Wireframes, & Testing



Sketches

Looking at the webapp, we decided early on that our guiding principle was to maintain the interaction model from web, within mobile. Leveraging expected mobile affordances and interactions only made this model more user friendly. We also decided that we would create one experience for iOS and Android, that might blend some of the native affordances of both platforms. For example, Apple's bottom tab nav, or Android's floating buttons.



Wireframes

It's so hard to capture the hundreds of wireframes that get created, but here are a few.
We used these wireframes to align as a team, but also to conduct usability tests. I created a 30 minute script that we were able to run through with internal stakeholders, and external users. We refined the layout, UX, and UI iteratively until we had confidence.

Phase 3 - Specs

Email Threads

Notes

Drafts

Notifications

Phase 4 - Final designs, prototypes, & more tests



Interactive prototypes



Final iOS designs




Redlines & flow charts

Phase 5 - Launch, Iterate, & Test

We moved forward with iOS first, starting an internal alpha, then inviting customers and trial users to a beta, and finally an Apple app store launch. During beta, I worked closely with Marketing and Sales to create a buzz and launch plan for both public beta, app store, and android play store.

The journey has just begun...We just launched in the Apple & Google app/play store, and are tracking usage and bugs, as well as getting a steady stream of in-app feedback.

As a lead designer, it was a welcomed challenge to also PM this project. Getting to test out a kanban approach, as opposed to sprints was extremely effective for an MVP launch.

Our main KPI on this launch was to have zero trial cancellations due to a lack of a mobile app. From here, now we prioritize features of the companion apps and ideally merge the desktop UI to be a mobile first design.