Grief Support App · 2022 to 2023 · Lead Product Designer
Granate
I led product design for Granate, an app for an early stage startup, that supports people through loss and end of life planning. My work spanned UX, UI, branding, and product strategy.
- ~25% drop in onboarding drop off
- ~30% increase in weekly engagement
- Set the development team up for quick feature delivery
Lead Product Designer
Work includedUX, UI, Product Strategy, Brand, Marketing, Research
- How might we connect users through community?
- How might we simplify the experience?
- How might we deliver a smart and adaptive user experience?
- How might we define a strong brand identity?
Design system
I redesigned the app visually, and shipped key usability improvements alongside the rebrand.
User interviews kept flagging navigation as a pain point. After a full audit, I improved the navigation by reducing variations, cutting redundant sub nav, and using clearer UI patterns for a more intuitive experience.
Users now see a focused view when reviewing specific tasks and questions.
There was a big drop off between opening the app and reaching the homepage, largely because onboarding was long and dense.
As part of the new design, I pitched and shipped a skip option at the end of account creation to allow users to get in and try the app out before finalizing setup.
I also introduced a progress bar to help users track their progress through onboarding.
I rebuilt every component under the new brand identity with an emphasis on usability, scalability, and team accessibility. I used dedicated Figma pages per component type for easy internal discovery and access.
With a small dev team, design work often got deprioritized. I split the redesign into four phases so we could ship it piece by piece, capture value in each release, without the app feeling inconsistent along the way.
I redesigned the Granate UI, updated the brand, and shipped real user improvements, all within a small team.
Community
Granate's core mission is to ease the burden of loss, so the community feature serves it directly.
- Story viewing
- Story submission
- Liking
- Commenting
- Comment replies
- Profile
- Community guidelines
- Image posts
- Post management
- Notifications
- Notification settings
- Reporting
- In app submission
- Curated email
I wireframed, and diagrammed the MVP user flows, and after team discussion we settled the direction. One key debate was social sharing of posts and visibility to non users. We prioritized security and kept the app private to users.
Early collaboration made the move from user flows to wireframes smooth and cleared up any unknowns before designing the UI. I sketched each flow and interaction and communicated with the dev team to stay within the technically feasible.
The feature drove a ~30% increase in weekly engagement across daily active users and increased retention.
Curated tasks
Our content was accurate, but the way we surfaced it needed work.
I started by auditing every task and question, mapping how questions trigger subtasks and what else in the app might influence them.
Next I analyzed task prioritization and due date sequencing.
From there I built a sliding scale of responsibility. A grieving spouse and an executor managing an estate have different needs, so we ask qualifying questions to set the role, then recommend relevant tasks and deprioritize the rest.
The redesigned app
Clearer navigation, curated tasks, and a community, all on the new design system.
