Ziplet

As a Senior Product Designer at Ziplet, I was responsible for leading the design of the product, managing the design system, and unifying the overall brand. My main focus was conducting user research, gathering insights to develop product enhancements, creating wireframes, and designing and constantly iterating on the user interface of the web and mobile apps. I collaborated with the Product Manager, developers, stakeholders, and other teams to ensure the product met the needs and goals of the users while also achieving the business objectives.

In addition to my role within the Product team, I supported the Sales, Growth, and Marketing teams by designing the website, assisting with collateral, and creating design assets to support the brand.

At Ziplet, I took on a diverse range of responsibilities and worked hard to be self-motivated and proactive in a fast-paced and adaptable environment. The support and confidence in me from my team enabled me to enhance my problem-solving, communication, and teamwork skills, which was invaluable for my personal and professional growth.

I led the implementation of a complete company rebrand, which included a completely new identity and name change. I was responsible for expanding on the proposed style guide to build up an extensive and cohesive new brand identity, updating all existing collateral across the business, and creating a range of new supporting assets.

I also advocated for the company to switch design tools from Sketch to Figma to stay current with industry practices. As a result, I built Ziplet's first design system and component library in Figma, migrated old designs, updated product components and screens, and rolled out UI updates across web and mobile platforms. Additionally, I was responsible for maintaining the design system on a constant basis.

I utilised Figma to organise resources and assets beyond the Product team and to maintain a company-wide single source of truth. I trained team members on how to use Figma with the goal of cross-functional collaboration.

I designed several versions of the marketing website over the years, with the most recent being a full redesign and rebuild during the company rebrand. I collaborated closely with the Growth and Marketing teams to plan and finalise the new IA. Afterwards, I was tasked with designing the components, pages, and all necessary assets. I used Webflow to build the site myself, ensuring it was responsive and compatible on different devices. I was also responsible for ongoing updates to the site.

During my time at Ziplet, I played a key role in designing and implementing several major product enhancements. Including some key features:

• GO! Classes: a unique class type that allows students to access classes using a PIN instead of creating an account. I also designed a new student version of the app specifically for these classes, addressing the challenge teachers faced when running classes for young students without their own devices or who may have difficulty signing up.
• Integrations: enabling teachers to link their Ziplet accounts with popular EdTech tools such as Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams. Additionally, I worked on implementing SSO integrations, making it more convenient for institutions to onboard and self-manage large groups of teachers and students.
• Question management: enhancing the core 'ask a question' feature by adding announcements, scheduling, question repeating, and auto-closing options, as well as the ability to save questions in draft form. This streamlined the process and addressed the needs of teachers who wanted to organise their classes well in advance, tackled the pain points of teachers who were short on time, and aimed to improve the business' 'retention' metric.
• Enhanced analytics: adding filtering to question responses, visual charts, and a word cloud, quick reaction to student responses via emojis, and filtered group replies to students. All of these feature enhancements improved data analytics for teachers and institutions, making it easier to track student progress, spot trends, and highlight students who may require more attention.
• Optimised onboarding flow: a streamlined process for each individual account type, which involved redesigning the UI, adding steps and prompts to complete the onboarding process, as well as including hints on how to use the app along the way. The goal was to make it easier for users to get started as well as improve the business' 'activation' metric.
• Ziplet Plus: a paid tier for teachers which provided access to advanced features, while ensuring the free tier still offered value to users. This involved designing a subscription feature with payment plans, upgrade and downgrade flows, and changing the UI to account for feature restrictions or limitations. Introducing Ziplet Plus was driven by improving the product's value proposition and the business' 'revenue' metric.

As a member of a small, fast-paced team, where the product was constantly evolving, the projects I worked on always varied in scale and scope. Therefore, the timeline and methodology for each project was unique. However, an example of my design process typically involved the following steps:

1. Understand the objectives and requirements of the project
2. Conduct user research through surveys and interviews
3. Analyse data and identify user needs, pain points, and goals
4. Create user personas and map journeys using the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework
5. Align user challenges with business goals
6. Define the information architecture
7. Develop wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes
8. Test the designs with users and gather feedback
9. Incorporate feedback and iterate on the designs
10. Create high-fidelity designs and interface elements
11. Release the designs for development and continue testing
12. Collaborate with developers to ensure the design is implemented correctly
13. Review and develop strategies for future enhancements
14. Continuously monitor the product's performance and gather feedback for future improvements.