Freelance Product Designer
(UX & Strategy)
Debate Mate
The new virtual world for students
Role: Debate Mate Virtual, London, 2021. Lead UX and Product Strategist. Working in a design collective with a product designer, I shaped the approach to prioritise the product feature roadmap and over arching user journeys for their sales, management and internal admin. They operated as a ed-tech startup so budget and resource was tight. My coaching role was to help their Product Manager prioritise and make big decision calls, like changing their tech development partner.
Key skills: Product management and strategy, design thinking, user research, information architecture, lean UX and agile implementation (writing user stories, weekly sprint planning and co-ordinating team.)
Client background: Debate Mate was set up to tackle educational disadvantage in Britain's most deprived communities. The pandemic halted any physical student debate clubs and accelerated their reliance on virtual clubs. Debate Mate Virtual is the start-up arm of their social business aimed at UK and global students delivering high quality online teaching. I wanted to help and be part of their continued success.
Launched 2021
Project: Creating seamless parent experiences
1. The mission
I wanted to help Debate Mate Virtual evolve their digital sales, management and admin experiences around the following key metrics:
Increase in multiple course purchases by one parent (revenue and engagement)
Success in the set up process post sales (had a high failure rate)
Engage with content and their child's performance/progress
Ability to self service to change or access clubs (reduce operational costs)
Stabilise brand and start the process of a design system (UI kit)
Create a realistic roadmap and sprints to deploy key features
I worked closely with the Product Manager and led the project to ensure tech issues were addressed as soon as possible. Plus manage scope and made the right pivots to stop burning their money.
Calling out what doesn't work asap
2. The approach
I led the team (including external developers) to collectively create a milestone plan, sprints and ways of working as one team. However, early during the process I had to call out the capability of the developers. We quickly made a pivot to scale back the design and features to ensure launch in summer 2021. A new development company was transitioned to part way through.
UX work samples
Mapping new journeys and success metrics
Wireframes
Adaptive designs focused on key success metrics, (designs by Jonathan Burrows).
Launched just in time!
3. Outcomes
Team effort to ensure the sales and set up experience was ready for summer 2021. Debate Mate realised that continuous change, pivots and an uneasy journey is part of the road to success.
Key outputs from myself and designer:
Feature roadmap and delivery plan
Optimised sales and platform journeys
Future vision backlog
Brand stabilisation and refinement
IA, flows, wireframes and screens
Lean component library and brand toolkit
4. Conclusion
Was really happy to have called out the big issues early and pivoted where needed. Working with tight resources and deadlines should not prevent challenging the status quo. Factoring in time for thorough QA and iteration should always be a consideration for the design team.