Founding Designer
@ HelloCreator
HelloCreator is an AI-powered platform that supports creators in their common struggles, focusing on eliminating drudgery and increasing the joy of creation.
As the Founding Designer, I led the team in generative research, solution ideation, prototyping, and user testing. I also collaborated with AI and Dev to develop the voice and tone of our Coach product.
Our first experiment was an app called Coach. The Coach app reviews the creator’s Instagram account so the AI can make helpful suggestions about both their creative work and their social posting.
Generative Research
Our first step as a startup was to interview creators of all kinds. I performed the interviews remotely via Zoom, uncovered their pain points, and created an affinity map of needs.
Design Workshops
I then led a number of workshops with the whole team. We reviewed the affinity map, refined the categories of needs, and plotted them on an impact/effort chart. This led to a grouping of related needs which formed our initial product focus. I designed a 2-day mini design sprint to generate preliminary product ideas, and we picked an exciting direction.
Personalized Prototypes
One of the critical elements of our plan was hyper-personalization, so I created a customized click-through prototype for each of our user tests, using the creator’s own Instagram content to make the experience feel as real as possible.
Learnings from Prototype Testing
Our prototype research exposed some strengths and some weaknesses in our product plan. We regrouped, simplified the experience, did a lot of new research with creators, and developed a Wizard of Oz prototype that leveraged a professional creator coach playing the part of an AI.
I took the learnings from all of the research and Wizard-of-Oz prototypes and created an opportunity map with learnings on the top, and our proposed solution spaces on the bottom. This map helped us clarify the scope of our v.1 beta product.
We launched a private Beta and iterated with extensive user feedback, including participatory design sessions, diary studies, and interviews.
Although the app is still a simple experiment, we received some great feedback from the Beta users:
“It’s a great social media mentor for me.”
“It kind of feels like having a team at my fingertips.”
“When I started using Coach, it was just like, oh, my God, it's like he really knows me.”