While the founding team had thoroughly researched the market gap, and had then hired me to design the product, nobody had considered the different user journeys required to make this work. This covered three varied groups with different needs: the facilitators running the workshops, the researchers analysing the output, and the workshop participants attending the sessions.

​

Four months didn’t allow for a full research programme, so I opted for a fast, targeted research approach. I created detailed user journey maps for all three groups, mapping every task, goal and need I believed they had. I then ran rapid, practical workshops with real facilitators, researchers, and participants, where we completed the journey maps together, validated or discarded every hypothesis, and prioritised the remaining items. These top priorities became the MVP scope.

The Engineer couldn’t sit around waiting for me to finish the designs before he started the build, so I worked in a way he could start straight away. I did this by being strategic about what functionality I could be sure of based on my design experience, and what needed prototyping and testing with users before build. I designed the simplest functionality upfront, thereby releasing him to start building, whilst I then did further user testing around the more complex user journeys.

​

I ran two simulated workshops, each with one facilitator and 12 participants, a mix of colleagues and friends from outside the team. Two key findings from testing changed the product:

Creating a mobile view where a user can partake in an online, interactive workshop alongside 12 other people is hard and time-consuming, both from a design and build perspective. I had to make the decision whether we could drop this aspect from the MVP launch, or whether it was just too critical.

​

I worried that not catering for mobile-only-users would exclude key groups, or make the product seem too basic to sell. To test this, I created rapid, low-fidelity prototypes of a mobile workshop experience to test. I found that, due to the screen size limitations, participants couldn’t see the other attendees so well, and found it harder to partake in the interactive elements. Their experience was better all-around when using a larger screen. So we decided to prioritise a more stable MVP that offered a better user experience, over wider device support.

​

Until the mobile experience was built, we solved this issue with a service built into client budgets where we hired tablets, sent them to participants who needed them, helped them get set up, and collected the tablets afterwards.

The MVP launched after 4 months, simple but stable, on tablets and laptops. Researchers could build bespoke workshops for each client and group, with their own content and questions.

​

Immediately after launch, we prepared the first client's workshops. That meant technical deep dives with the client teams, content design for a non-expert audience, and shooting the videos, and building the workshop.

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First Client: Southend City Council

Workshop Requirements: 45 workshops with 281 participants

Participant post-workshop survey results:

• Average enjoyment 9.2/10
• 98% said it was a good way to engage
• 4 out of 5 felt more informed afterwards

AI tools have moved on a lot since we launched Zeitgeist in 2024. If I was to do the project again today, here is what I would do differently:

​

• Prototype straight into code using AI tools such as VS code, which would speed up the designer-to-developer handoff, as well as creating more lifelike prototypes for users to test.
• I would use AI to help synthesise my user research findings, clustering anonymised research notes and surfacing recurring themes.
• I’d build a lightweight design system from the start, which is now much easier with newly-released AI models to help tokenise the finalised components. As it was, under the four-month deadline I designed screens without a design system, and retrofitted it later which was an arduous job.

While the founding team had thoroughly researched the market gap, and had then hired me to design the product, nobody had considered the different user journeys required to make this work. This covered three varied groups with different needs: the facilitators running the workshops, the researchers analysing the output, and the workshop participants attending the sessions.

​

Four months didn’t allow for a full research programme, so I opted for a fast, targeted research approach. I created detailed user journey maps for all three groups, mapping every task, goal and need I believed they had. I then ran rapid, practical workshops with real facilitators, researchers, and participants, where we completed the journey maps together, validated or discarded every hypothesis, and prioritised the remaining items. These top priorities became the MVP scope.

The Engineer couldn’t sit around waiting for me to finish the designs before he started the build, so I worked in a way he could start straight away. I did this by being strategic about what functionality I could be sure of based on my design experience, and what needed prototyping and testing with users before build. I designed the simplest functionality upfront, thereby releasing him to start building, whilst I then did further user testing around the more complex user journeys.

​

I ran two simulated workshops, each with one facilitator and 12 participants, a mix of colleagues and friends from outside the team. Two key findings from testing changed the product:

Creating a mobile view where a user can partake in an online, interactive workshop alongside 12 other people is hard and time-consuming, both from a design and build perspective. I had to make the decision whether we could drop this aspect from the MVP launch, or whether it was just too critical.

​

I worried that not catering for mobile-only-users would exclude key groups, or make the product seem too basic to sell. To test this, I created rapid, low-fidelity prototypes of a mobile workshop experience to test. I found that, due to the screen size limitations, participants couldn’t see the other attendees so well, and found it harder to partake in the interactive elements. Their experience was better all-around when using a larger screen. So we decided to prioritise a more stable MVP that offered a better user experience, over wider device support.

​

Until the mobile experience was built, we solved this issue with a service built into client budgets where we hired tablets, sent them to participants who needed them, helped them get set up, and collected the tablets afterwards.

AI tools have moved on a lot since we launched Zeitgeist in 2024. If I was to do the project again today, here is what I would do differently:

​

• Prototype straight into code using AI tools such as VS code, which would speed up the designer-to-developer handoff, as well as creating more lifelike prototypes for users to test.
• I would use AI to help synthesise my user research findings, clustering anonymised research notes and surfacing recurring themes.
• I’d build a lightweight design system from the start, which is now much easier with newly-released AI models to help tokenise the finalised components. As it was, under the four-month deadline I designed screens without a design system, and retrofitted it later which was an arduous job.