Validating product strategy through structured user research
Overview
Teamstarter is a participatory funding platform for innovators. Coaches were dropping out of the project support process because the tooling didn't match how they actually worked. I led discovery and prioritization as freelance designer.
Challenge
The team had 20+ feature ideas but no validated direction. Building the wrong thing faster is worse than building the right thing slower.
Objective: Answer "what do coaches actually need?" before designing anything.
Approach
Challenged assumptions — Team thought coaches needed more communication. I suspected they were wrong.
Ran 12 interviews — Coaches wanted async check-ins, not more meetings. Real problem: context-switching between 5+ projects.
Synthesized 3 core needs — Status updates without meetings, visibility when offline, async feedback. Opposite of team's proposal.
Validated with storyboards — Async-first approach won with coaches.
Delivered a backlog, not UI — Prioritized features from coach feedback instead of designing full interface.
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Validating product strategy through structured user research
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