The Challenge
When I joined GoWall in late 2014, the company was pre-launch — roughly six people building a digital sticky note platform for team collaboration. I came in as a startup generalist with a background across marketing, design, writing, sales, and customer service. No title. No design role. Product direction flowed to an overseas design and development team through 10-20 page Word documents — dense text describing visual ideas without visuals. The results rarely matched what we’d envisioned, and meetings devolved into blame over miscommunication rather than productive conversation. Design cycles frequently stretched for months.
"We were trying to communicate visual ideas through words."
No one was addressing the core problem. I wasn’t in a design role, but I was in the room for these meetings, working long hours across every function a bootstrapped startup needed. I could see it clearly: we were trying to communicate visual ideas through words.
The Innovation
I came up with a solution on my own time: if we knew what we wanted, we should show them — not describe it. I created interactive prototypes in PowerPoint, realistic enough that when people clicked through them, they frequently thought they were in the actual tool. I pitched the approach to leadership. They approved it immediately.
"The constant conflict between our team and the overseas team disappeared."
The results were instant: cycles that could take over a month became weekly iterations. The constant conflict between our team and the overseas firm disappeared. Everyone could see what we were building. This work created the Lead Designer role, which I stepped into in 2017.
The Partnership
"Two people replacing two teams."
By 2018, the new process had proven so effective that we eliminated the overseas design team entirely — I replaced 3-5 designers working through an external firm. I worked with Jingzhao Ou, a senior engineer holding dozens of patents, who single-handedly replaced the overseas development team. Two people replacing two outsourced teams — that shift became the foundation for what followed.
The Research
No one had talked to users. The team was building based on internal assumptions about what users wanted. I initiated comprehensive user research and conducted it myself. Over 6 months, 50+ interviews: 20 current users, 15 prospective users, 15 meeting facilitators, and 10 key stakeholders. The research revealed a fundamental mismatch. Participants couldn’t easily join meetings, facilitators couldn’t easily create them, and 7 unlabeled environments created confusion. But once users reached the wall and started adding notes, everything clicked. I wouldn’t redesign the wall — it was already intuitive. Everything else needed to match that simplicity.
“I wouldn’t redesign the wall — it was already intuitive. Everything else needed to match that simplicity.”
The Redesign
I led a year-long platform redesign that addressed the critical friction points the research had identified. The core interaction — writing a note and posting it to the wall — already worked. I redesigned nearly everything else. Participants had been spending up to 10 minutes navigating unnamed home screens, finding code entry boxes, and entering codes. I replaced this entirely with a shareable magic link — click and you’re in the meeting. Ten minutes became three seconds.
"Ten minutes became three seconds."
Account creation dropped from 3-5 minutes to 30 seconds. Seven unlabeled environments became four clearly named spaces: Home, Wall, Setup, and People. Meeting creation went from requiring technical support to straightforward self-service. I designed features like facilitator view controls to keep large groups focused during sessions. Together, these improvements enabled teams to complete work in hours that previously took days.
The Impact
The platform gained adoption across Fortune 500, Fortune 2000, and SMB companies, and received coverage in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Inc. The company faced funding challenges in 2019. In a category where products typically require major redesigns every 2-3 years, the design foundation I created remains in market 7+ years later.
The Takeaways
Strategic design is knowing what not to change.
Users loved adding notes to the wall. The breakthrough wasn’t redesigning that core experience — it was making everything else match that simplicity. This restraint, informed by research, created lasting value.
The best solutions often remove, not add.
The magic link didn’t improve the onboarding flow — it eliminated it entirely. Ten minutes of navigation became three seconds of clicking a link. When facing complex problems, ask: what can we subtract?
Interview the people who say no.
Current users knew the product was overly complex — but they’d adapted to it. Non-users hadn’t. The people who wouldn’t use GoWall revealed this friction needed to go, not just improve. The critics shaped the strategic insight behind the entire redesign.
Create the role you need to exist.
The Lead Designer position didn’t exist in 2017. I solved a problem no one asked me to solve, proved the value through results, and the role emerged organically. Sometimes you can’t wait for the org chart to catch up — you demonstrate the need through work.
The GoWall work established patterns I bring to every project: see what needs to happen, initiate it, and deliver work that lasts.