Building a Product from 0 to 1
Conceptualization & Prototyping
I began with whiteboarding sessions, translating our early ideas into tangible prototypes that would become the foundation of our V1 web app. I designed the initial product to connect water, temperature, and electricity sensors to the sump pump in order to give actionable alerts before a disaster happened.
Fundraising & Partnerships
My prototypes were used to raise the money to build the MVP and then V1 of the sump pump monitoring product. In addition I helped to design the pitch decks and participated in the presentations that secured that initial funding.
Product Development
After we secured our initial investment, I led the transition from a MVP to a V1 web app and then finally to a native mobile app for both iOS and Android. I expanded the app’s functionality by designing new features and rebuilt parts of the user experience after we changed hardware providers.
User Experience Improvements
We improved the UI/UX countless times over the 5+ years I worked on the product but one example I like to highlight is how I redesigned our entire onboarding experience. In order to really understand our installation and onboarding I traveled to the Alabama and personally crawled under homes into damp, dark crawlspaces to install our product. Experiencing the installation firsthand allowed me to identify pain points and optimize both dealer onboarding workflows and the new user experience for homeowners.
Design Leadership
I was the design lead for our small but mighty team. Every aspect of the design of the Shipshape product was done by myself and Dennie and eventually Olga who joined ~3 years later. As a team we built our design system, set design priorities, and expanded the product into a platform that included a wide variety of use-cases. We started with the Sump Pump monitoring product and by the time we were finished the platform included Sump Pump, Dehumidifier, Hot Water Heater, HVAC, Ice Machine, and many more home appliances. Each with unique value propositions and use-cases. Through continuous iteration and user feedback, we delivered a polished, user-centric experience that met the needs of both dealers and homeowners.
End-to-End Product Development
Throughout this process, I participated in and often led every aspect of product development — ideation, prototyping, requirements gathering, user testing, developer collaboration, hardware sourcing, monetization strategy, product road mapping, and release planning.
An early prototype of the web app
Hardware: Power Sensor, Gateway, Multi-sensor (includes humidity, Temp, water), and Range Extender
Alex (right) and me (left) visiting the dev team in Kyiv
App Screenshot: Download the Shipshape Home App on iOS and Android today
Demo Training Video
I created this demo, the designs, the flows and everything involved here to help our sales team secure partnerships with important home service providers we call dealers.
I recorded this video in order to teach a sales team member to use the demo so they can then pitch to each of the dealers they hope to sign on as partners.
This is just one example of what I was constantly doing to support sales, marketing, engineering, fundraising, et al.
Home Health Score Demo
This is one example of countless similar videos, demos, mockups I created and would attach to a Jira ticket or send in a slack DM to an engineer or sales team member.
In this case I received a feature request and did all the PM work of prioritizing it, defining all the requirements, creating the Jira ticket, T-shirt sizing it with engineers, and creating any supporting tickets associated with this feature.
I also did all of the design work of creating a flow diagram, sketching it out quickly to get stakeholder feedback and/or user feedback, creating all the designs and any custom components that were required (updating our design library if needed), and turning my designs into a clickable prototype to showcase the interaction design and help