Accelerating 0 to 1 with strategic design
0 to 1
Research
UX / UI
Visual Design
Technology
Context
Google Area 120 was Google's in-house incubator for experimental projects, giving small teams of startup-minded founders the space to explore bold new ideas. These ventures are often early-stage, high-ambiguity, and aimed at identifying new product opportunities for Google.
Teams struggled to graduate not because they couldn't build great things, but because they didn't know how to properly de-risk and validate hypotheses on user's true needs.
DesignMap partnered with them as an embedded strategic design team — helping founders clarify vision, test concepts, and build thoughtful user experiences. My work included rapid discovery, user research, and prototyping to help teams take bigger risks on ideas that generate true value for their users.
Role
Lead or Co-Designer, depending on team
Collaborators
Variable by project, but typically included:
Founder
Engineering team
Research team
Responsibilities
Research and concept testing
E2E UX & UI MVP Build
Design System
Supporting foundational artifacts and models
Key Successes
73%
of teams supported by us progressed to the next stage
26%
of teams supported by us fully graduated (up from a 10% historical program average)
Team transformations
Shift to a more user-centered focus and increased innovation
Consideration and evaluation of assumptions
Mindset shift from focusing exclusively on solutions to examining problem spaces
Projects I Played a Role In
Storybop
AI to streamline video planning and editing
Splash
Dedicated web comic platform for comic readers and AI tools for creators
Electric Avenue
Enhanced predictability and planning for long-distance EV trips
Beacon
Tools and content to help people stay safe across their devices and accounts
NoEB
AI tools to measure carbon stock in land so landowners can get carbon credits that reward forest preservation
EXAMPLES OF HOW I HELPED TEAMS
During Discovery
Ambitious founders could get overwhelmed by their chosen problem space, and feel compelled to solve everything for everyone, making the scope unattainable.
Through tailored workshops and discovery activities, I helped teams evaluate different facets of the problem space and move forward with compelling ideas that fit within their timeline.
A market landscape exploring hypotheses derived from team’s domain expertise
Journey maps visualized where the real pain was happening and revealed the complex dependancies generating that pain
Workshops to help teams articulate problems clearly and connect them to compelling value props
During Research & Testing
Teams were under pressure to get real traffic into their apps before graduation, so it was critical they validate their concepts with users.
But users’ words don’t always translate to numbers, so I developed concept tests in collaboration with Google’s researchers to mitigate bias and uncover what users truly value.
The approach consistently surfaced the stronger offering, with users more openly sharing their hesitations and the tradeoffs they were weighing.
Taking our existing ideas and breaking them out into distinct concepts that interviewees could weigh against each other
Concepts were presented in the form of narratives based on use cases given in previous generative research
During Execution and Visual Development
Founders could build great technology, but didn't know where to start taking their ideas over the finish line into a product that enabled users to understand and access it's benefits.
I jumpstarted visual design systems that both appealed to intended audience of the product and supported user understanding.
Rapid development of an MLP design system starting from a minimal but already-established logo and color palette
For products with complex, automated features, exploration and testing of different layouts to ensure intuitiveness and rapid realization of value for users was critical.
Visual test concepts and example validated layout for a product that automatically organized video clips for content creators
