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.
Results
12 interviews conducted, 3 core needs identified
3 storyboards validated with coaches
MVP shipped Q3 2023 based on this research (I didn't design the final UI — another designer owned that)
What I learned : My best work wasn't interface design. It was asking the right questions before touching Figma. I became a translator between team assumptions and user reality. Most valuable output: a prioritized backlog, not a pretty design.
