Leading Product Design at Indiegogo

In 2016, as Director of Product Design at Indiegogo, I led a team focused on improving the platform for entrepreneurs while ensuring a seamless experience for backers. The goal was to streamline the fundraising process, making it easier for entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to life and for backers to support and engage with those projects.

Challenges of a fast-moving organization

But working in a fast-paced environment presented some key challenges. Despite having small, efficient teams, we faced three main issues. First, teams often worked in silos, unaware of what others were doing, making it difficult to create cohesive, cross-platform experiences. Second, there was no shared framework or big-picture view of the end-to-end user journey. Lastly, valuable customer insights, especially from the customer support team, weren’t being integrated into our product development process.

Introducing the Experience Wall

To tackle these problems, I developed the Experience Wall, a life-size, interactive installation designed to break down silos and give everyone in the company a clearer, shared view of the user journey. The wall mapped out the complete experience for both entrepreneurs and backers, outlining their goals, actions, pain points, and the solutions we were working on.
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What made the Experience Wall truly effective wasn’t just the information it displayed, but how it fostered collaboration. Teams could gather around the wall, contribute their own insights, and engage with the journey. It was interactive—using color-coded post-its and hand-drawn visuals, making it easy for anyone in the company to add their thoughts and ideas. This approach also gave our customer support team a platform to share the invaluable insights they’d gathered from users, which had often been overlooked before.

Breaking Down Silos and Improving Collaboration

The Experience Wall wasn’t just a static tool; it became a powerful catalyst for collaboration. It brought different departments together, helping them understand how their work contributed to the broader user experience. By having a shared framework, teams could better see the connections between their work and understand how their solutions fit into the bigger picture.

Moreover, the wall integrated insights from customer support, ensuring that user feedback was always front and center. This helped us make more informed decisions and better align our products with the actual needs and challenges of our users.

Sustained Impact and Looking Ahead

The Experience Wall had a lasting impact. It became a central part of our product process, used in All Hands meetings and frequently updated to keep everyone aligned. More than just a tool, it transformed how we thought about collaboration and user experience across teams.

The success of the Experience Wall at Indiegogo influenced my approach in other roles at companies like NerdWallet and Google. I’ve continued to use visual storytelling to simplify complex concepts, drive collaboration, and ensure that teams are united in their approach to product design. This method has proven to create better products and stronger teams, and it’s something I’m excited to continue pursuing.