Zero to MVP:
What Happens When You're
the First UX Hire.
I joined an MIT-backed non-profit with a five-month runway. Before I left for maternity leave, I structured an org-wide research practice, trained a team, and helped ship a civic engagement app.
before a single wireframe was drawn
clients informing the mobile build
launched during my maternity leave
The MIT Center for Constructive Communication identified deep polarization among students and a growing trust gap with university administration. Grant funding was directed toward a non-profit whose desktop tooling let partner organizations upload and analyze qualitative conversation data.
But the product had a foundational problem: it wasn't built for the people who needed it most. Recording conversations in the field was cumbersome. Users consistently needed heavy hand-holding from the partnerships team which was not scalable.
Timeline
Leadership set an ambitious target: idea to shipped app in five months (July to December. We hit it. The app launched on schedule, while I was on maternity leave, which began November 23rd. 🎉
Budget
I put together the organization's first formal UX budget proposal: covering Maze, Dovetail, Jira Product Discovery, $20 Amazon e-gift cards per usability tester, and $15 per teammate for our inaugural UX Lunch & Learn. Leadership approved it enthusiastically.
Disclaimer
Figma embeds contain my hand-drawn work. Screenshots are my own unless noted, collaborative work with PMs, designers, and fellow researchers is credited accordingly.
| Team | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| 2 Product Leads | Scoping & feasibility |
| 2 iOS Developers | Mobile app design |
| 2 UX Designers | Wireframes & prototyping |
| 2 MIT Researchers | AI & academic research |
| 1 Lead UX Researcher (me!) | Lead end-to-end research, storyboard, prototype, guide MVP roadmap. |
| 1 Jr. UX Researcher | Observing & practicing interviews, & learning new UX tools |
Objective 1
Align product goals with technical feasibility and stakeholder priorities
- Host 11 stakeholder interviews to finalize top use cases
- Define who the target users are
Objective 2
Elevate user voices to shape meaningful, inclusive features
- Test MVP with 3–5 users per user group
- Prioritize user feedback into the MVP roadmap
Objective 3
Design a user-friendly, accessible app that drives engagement
- Achieve 100% WCAG 2.1 AA compliance by launch
Objective 4
Collect and prioritize feedback to foster constructive dialogue
- Synthesize findings into a user research report by end of Q3
| Method | Why | Key output |
|---|---|---|
| Stakeholder interviews | Align on goals, feasibility, and user definition before any design began | Top use cases, two priority personas |
| Journey mapping | Understand distinct needs across student and admin user groups | Personas + journey maps |
| Market analysis | Identify competitive gaps and differentiation opportunities | Value proposition + SWOT |
| Focus groups | Understand how younger users engage with digital platforms | Refined user flows + backlog items |
| Survey (Qualtrics) | Baseline data on desktop use cases from 30+ existing clients | Pain points + desktop/mobile sync needs |
| User interviews | Deep-dive on frustrations and unmet needs across NGOs, gov, and students | Prioritized must-haves + hand-drawn scenarios |
| Usability testing (Maze) | Validate prototype before development; test mental model fit | >80/100 usability score pre-launch |
Before running a single user session, I needed to align the organization on what we were building and for whom. I initiated 20-minute interviews across leadership, product, partnerships, engineering, and AI — using them to surface four critical questions the org hadn't yet formally asked:
Who are our users? · What top use cases should the app address? · What problem are we actually solving? · How do we bring existing AI and desktop functionality into a mobile experience?
These sessions were the first time this organization had formally structured research as an organizational input. I used the findings to align objectives with technical feasibility before a single wireframe was drawn.
Journey mapping sessions surfaced two primary personas with distinct needs and goals:
College students
Needed a mobile-first experience that enabled inclusive, community-driven conversations — and met them where they already were: on their phones.
University administrators
Needed structured data output and seamless session organization to extract actionable insights from discussions.
These personas became the north star for every design and product decision that followed.
I created the personas (purple rectangles) and used a FigJam template to co-lead the workshop with a Jr. UX researcher I was coaching!
Start conversations
As a user, I want to start a conversation in the app so that I can engage others and capture meaningful discussions.
Record conversations
As a user, I want to record both in-person and remote conversations so that I can preserve discussions for future reference.
Access transcripts
As a user, I want to access a transcript immediately after recording so that I can make sense of the discussion.
Highlight transcripts
As a user, I want to highlight key transcript moments so that I can organize and surface insights quickly.
While running stakeholder interviews, I conducted a parallel market analysis — including a SWOT assessment of direct and indirect competitors and an evaluation of industry trends.
Yes, I am Team Dark Mode.
We partnered with MIT to run a 6-week focus group with 10 students transitioning from high school to college. Sessions explored app functionality, accessibility, and AI-driven prompts — giving us a window into how younger users actually engage with digital platforms.
Actual screenshot of the data from the focus groups that I uploaded to Dovetail (with signed media consent form)
I designed and distributed a Qualtrics survey to 30+ existing business clients to capture baseline data on current desktop use cases and pain points.
This was strategically important: the mobile app would need to sync with the desktop platform. Understanding that existing ecosystem wasn't optional — it was foundational to getting the two products to work together seamlessly.
The survey answered some questions and raised a lot more. One tension emerged clearly: existing users and their use cases were significantly different from the potential users we were designing for — especially students engaging in civic dialogue on mobile.
I led in-depth interviews with NGOs, local government leaders, and students to dig into frustrations, specific use cases, and future needs.
Output 1
A prioritized list of must-haves and nice-to-haves, added to JIRA Product Discovery through both async and sync team sessions.
Output 2
Hand-drawn user scenarios I wrote and illustrated to align design, product, and engineering on the same human-centered frame.
Using JIRA Product Discovery it was easy to link research insights directly to product priorities.
I synthesized interview findings using atomic UX techniques and thematic analysis in Dovetail — then turned that synthesis directly into action.
I facilitated a 60-minute interactive workshop with the cross-functional team to align on user priorities and feature sequencing. Together, we built a clear MVP roadmap grounded in data. I then created a JIRA epic with user stories and design tasks distributed across two design sprints.
Screenshot of the JIRA epic I created to guide the MVP mobile app project
My fellow UXR and I created and hosted the organization's first-ever UX-focused Lunch & Learn — sharing user insights company-wide for the first time. Team leads and teammates across design, engineering, and product left aligned on user needs and energized to act on them.
The actual flyer I made in Canva and feedback in Slack from the VP of Engineering.
With the team aligned, I translated key user scenarios from research notes into hand-drawn storyboards. These became the bridge between raw insights and MVP wireframes — giving designers a clear, human-centered frame to design from.
Turning research into wireframes was harder than anticipated — not because of product complexity, but because of team complexity. We had extraordinarily talented designers with combined decades of experience. We also had a distributed, mostly part-time team spread across time zones — and some interpersonal friction that required active navigation.
I kept us moving by keeping us anchored: to the user stories, to the storyboards, to the data. I also led a design-consultant-run workshop to push through the hardest decisions and injected fun wherever I could along the way.
Sketches I drew on my iPad to visualize the initial wireframes, I'm a huge Harry Potter fan...if you can't tell
Once we had a working MVP prototype, I designed an unmoderated usability test in Maze to evaluate the Figma prototype for usability, accessibility, and mental model fit — before a single line of code was written.
The results shaped our onboarding flow and core feature decisions. I incorporated all required WCAG-compliant theme changes, and the final app achieved a high usability score before development began.
Screenshot of the usability test I designed on Maze using the MVP prototype based on my storyboards
Objective 1
Objective 2
Objective 3
Objective 4
🌟 Glows
🌿 Grows