Insights+ – Driving Success Through Design Innovation
1.5 years (2018-2019)
Team: 4 developers (including an outsourced team in Vietnam), 1 designer (myself), 1 product manager
Lead Designer responsible for the end-to-end design process and offshore development collaboration
PROJECT TYPE
Startup — Mobile Analytics App (OriginX LLC)
MY ROLE
Lead Designer (sole designer)
TEAM
4 developers, 1 designer, 1 PM
PLATFORM
Mobile App (iOS — App Store)
METHODS
STATUS
Shipped
Problem Statement
Early interviews with Instagram creators surfaced a pattern: existing analytics tools buried the two or three metrics people actually checked under dense, all-at-once dashboards. Two other issues compounded it. Competing apps routinely asked for more account access than users were comfortable granting, and Instagram's frequent API changes meant anything built in this space had to survive constant change, not just launch once. Insights+ had to solve for clarity, trust, and durability at the same time.
Design Process & Implementation
This journey map guided the development of key features and informed our product strategy, ensuring alignment with user needs and business goals
Primary user personas developed through user research and interviews with target audience segments. Both personas represent key user groups with distinct needs and goals for the analytics platform.
Impact & Results
Business Outcomes
- Ranked in the top 10 analytics apps on the App Store in 2018
- Became OriginX’s primary revenue driver via subscription model
- Successfully adapted to 5 major Instagram API changes
- Achieved a 4.6/5 App Store rating
User Success Metrics
- 90% of users located key metrics within 30 seconds
- 8.5 minutes average session duration
- Strong user retention through iterative improvements
Reflections & Learnings (7 Years Later)
Design System Evolution
- Looking back, the biggest thing I'd change is timing — a real design system from day one would have made every later iteration faster instead of retrofitting consistency after the fact.
Business vs User Experience
- The tension I think about most, though, is business versus user experience: the subscription model paid for the whole team, but the tactics that grow revenue fastest aren't always the ones that earn trust. I'm more convinced now that sustainable growth and ethical design are the same problem, not competing ones.
Team Collaboration
- Managing an offshore team also taught me things no in-house project could have — how to write documentation precise enough to survive a language and time-zone gap, and how to give feedback asynchronously without losing nuance.
The Insights+ project marked a pivotal stage in my design career, evolving my focus from visual design to a more strategic, systematic approach. Its success validated our user-centric strategy, while the challenges shaped my current perspective on ethical design and efficient product development.
