Bringing women together for conversations that matter
Quilt is an iOS app that brings women together to talk about any topic they like, in a safe space through facilitated conversation. I worked with Quilt to design, build and launch their first iOS app.
Context
Quilt is an early stage startup that Quilt provides a way for women to connect offline. It enables women to open their homes to connect, build friendships and learn from one another.
I joined the team in January 2019 as Product Design Lead. My role in the first 6 months was to lead the design of the product from concept to launch. After the product launched, I started working with different stakeholders on optimizing various parts of the user journey, and identifying growth opportunities.
The piece below is a case study about the work itself and how to approach each stage of the growth funnel as a product designer.
My Role
Lead Product Designer
Wireframes, Prototyping, Facilitating User flow workshops, Instating usability testing, Creating a design process, UI Design, Building the Design system, Creating frameworks for non tech team to run product experiments, Collaborating with PM and Leadership on product roadmap
Team: 1 designer, 3 developers, 1 product Manager
The Problem
Of the 169 million women in the U.S., 75 million are in the workforce with an average salary of $45k per year. Access to daily connection, networking and professional development doesn’t exist for these women. Quilt creates a cohesive and offline experience that decentralizes access for professionally minded women, so they can connect and support each other.
My work at Quilt is divided into two phases, the first is designing and building the product, and enabling the team to ship a product to market and the second is identifying opportunities for growth. This case study gives an overview of both of these aspects.
Designing the product
User journeys, workflows and creating alignment with the team.
When I joined the team, they have already identified user personas, so the next step for us was mapping out the different stages of the user journey and aligning on which actions our users would take to accomplish the goals that we have set.
To create a shared understanding over the main actions that users should take, I facilitated multiple user flow workshops across different teams and stakeholders to create alignment and get input from everyone on the team.
App Architecture
After going over the major flows in the app and aligning the teams with primary actions that our users would go through for version 1 of the app. I created the information architecture and low-fi concepts for each flow. The I collaborated with developers to scope out the work ahead and prioritize it.
Usability Testing and Low Fi Prototypes
I tested the usability of the app’s main actions by using a quick prototypes that users can click through to complete tasks. The success of the design was determined by completion rate for each task given and how long it took to complete. Here is an example of what the prototype looked like for the onboarding flow:
The App
Browse Events
Users are able to browse events they are interested in through the Calendar view and the Map view.
In the Calendar view, they can filter for specific categories they are interested in like “Career” or “Growth and book any event they like.
Through the map view, users can browse events in their neighborhood and book something that is near them.
Book & Pay
After choosing the event they like, users can either accept an invitation or pay for the event they want to attend.
In the event details page, user can see details about who is attending the event and who is hosting it. More information and the degree of involvement in the community is shown in the profile view.
Connect Online, Attend Offline
After attending the event offline, users can continue to connect with the new people they’ve met through the app.
Building the Team Dashboard
The team dashboard provided a quick view of engagement and gave insight into how our events are performing. The dashboard helped the team track and manage events and it enabled admins to get qualitative data that help the business grow.
Identifying Growth Opportunities
In the second phase of my work at Quilt, I lead the team in Identifying the metrics that will move the business forward. I started working with the different teams in each part of the user journey to experiment, test and increase conversions.
Discover: How can we increase the number of app downloads?
I worked with the marketing team to increase conversions at top of the funnel. One idea we had that worked was hanging stickers on sunset boulevard at night when everyone is sleeping. Each member of the team got 100 stickers to hang in their neighborhoods.
We saw a +10% increase in downloads that week.
Continuous Iteration, design based on data
Products are never finished, especially because user’s needs change over time. One of my areas of focus at Quilt was continuous usability testing where I would prototype new ideas quickly and test them with our users so we can validate the ideas before moving forward. This allowed us to improve and iterate on existing features based on data and insights.
Working with teams
Working with non-technical teams to approach Quilt with a product mindset.
Advocating for different team’s perspectives and aligning everyone on user’s needs and business needs.
Collaborating with stakeholders on feature prioritization, business strategy and product roadmap.
