— GOAL
Build a newsletter generator
— ROLE
UX/UI Designer
— TIMELINE
6 Weeks
— TEAM
Stephanie de la Uz
Rishi B. (Lead)
Alex H. (Design)
Rebecca J. (PM)
Michoel K. (Dev)
Daniel M. (Dev)
John R. (Dev)
Sara S. (Design)
Sheena S. (Dev)
Suejin Y. (Design)
— TARGET AUDIENCE
Community managers
Supergroup, housed within the Communiti platform, is an AI tool designed to craft captivating newsletters for community managers to distribute among their communities.
Our focus on cutting down the time and effort a CM would need to take in writing a newsletter allowed for us to create a fully functional MVP product that gets the job done.
During our product's pitch, our team won 1st place amongst judges for our focus on new technology and for our straightforward & easy-to-use design.
PIVOT & PIVOT & PIVOT
Our product went through a few different changes during our sprints. We started as an AI tool for group chats (from phase 1), then pivoted to an AI tool for community managers in general after speaking with our internal stakeholder, before our final pivot to our AI newsletter generator within the Communiti platform. Our timeline overall as 6 weeks, but in reality it was more like 3 😅
THE PROBLEM: SO MUCH TO DO, SO
LITTLE TIME
Once we officially had an idea, we needed to focus on our target audience and how exactly we can help them. CMs are juggling multiple tasks across multiple platforms, and writing the community newsletter takes a lot of time and effort. Wouldn't it be great if everything they needed for creating a newsletter was in one place to be more efficient?
THE SOLUTION: GLANCE, CHECK, EDIT & SEND
Once we officially had an idea, we needed to focus on our target audience and how exactly we can help them. CMs are juggling multiple tasks across multiple platforms, and writing the community newsletter takes a lot of time and effort. Wouldn't it be great if everything they needed for creating a newsletter was in one place to be more efficient?
THE OUTCOME: A GOOD SPOT TO TEST & EXPAND + #1
We started off ambitious, and due to our shortened timeline, we decided to keep things moving as a simple MVP. That ended up being a good thing. We were able to complete designs, and working MVP by Pitch Night. We also placed first out of 4 total products, due to the ease of use in our design and incorporating AI in our product.
We did not have time to conduct usability testing, which puts our product in a great spot to do this next. After testing, we can continue to expand our product, like including a few more options for the CM to choose from, and continuing to train the AI.
Now, how exactly did we get here?
To quote Hilary Duff: “let’s go back, back to the beginning.” Since this was Phase 2 of the Supergroup product, we had decided to expand the original product: an AI tool to summarize group chats.
1. We decided to create a dashboard for these group chats, and potentially showcase these summaries somehow. We created a user flow + some lo-fi screens.
After discussions with our internal stakeholder, we pivoted, moving away from group chats and focusing on becoming an AI tool to summarize information for community managers and places them into a bulletin.
2. We re-worked our user flow + updated the lo-fi screens.
First lo-fi wireframe concept for the dashboard
Second lo-fi wireframe concept for the CM summarized bulletin
Wireframing
Our internal stakeholder realized we were building something very similar to Communiti. We pivoted (for the last time), to build a newsletter generator for community managers within Communiti.
User Flow
Screen 1 sketch
Screen 2 sketch
Final Designs
Through multiple iterations from the initial concept sketches, we arrived to our final designs: the generator, the editor, and the confirmation.
Our first screen, the “generator”, where a CM can choose what to include for the newsletter. I was responsible for this screen!
Our second screen, the “editor”, where the CM can preview the AI generated newsletter and edit the content, save the draft for later, and schedule when to send the newsletter to the community
Our last screen, the “confirmation”, where a CM is notified that their newsletter has been scheduled to be sent out. I was also responsible for this screen!
Design Handoff + Development
A week and a half prior to our Pitch Night, the designs were finalized and handed off to the development team. Throughout the development process, the designers (including yours truly) worked with the devs to create a fully functional MVP! The rest…is history 😎 (you read all about it up above!)
KEY LEARNINGS
1. Roll with the punches: life happens, and during projects is no exception. Just need to pick things up and keep going!
2. Try your best to conduct research: we weren’t able to conduct research during our 3 week sprints, and it definitely hindered progress further. That’s why that’s our first recommendation to Phase 3!
3. It takes a village: this was the first project where I worked not only with multiple designers, but also multiple developers! Everyone brought their strengths to the table to make our MVP happen in such a short time.
Check out our Pitch Deck below, or catch our full pitch from Pitch Night on YouTube (39:10 – 55:26)