Design sprint for SaaS platform revamp
An all-in-one digital management platform for Community Managers
Worked with Shaker’s founder and staff to redesign their digital management platform empowering Community Managers to run their organizations intuitively and efficiently.
Shaker Network (‘Shaker’) is a digital management platform for Community Managers who run professional, alumni and entrepreneur associations.
With Shaker, users can manage their members more efficiently with its all-in-one system, and help to foster engagement within their networks.
- Role:
- Project Manager, UX/UI Designer (Freelance)
- Team:
- Within a team of four, I led a redesign of Shaker’s landing page, onboarding flow, and core platform features for a more intuitive experience. As Project Manager, I kept the three-week timeline on track, created task roadmaps, and coordinated team responsibilities across research and design.
The Challenge
Shaker takes a simpler approach than other member management platforms but needed a UX redesign to better convert prospects into paying users. Though Shaker offers useful tools, Community Organizers (the users) struggled to see the value from the homepage and found it difficult to set up their group space with the platform’s limited automation.
Community Managers need streamlined onboarding and clear communication of features to feel confident in its value and quickly master its functions.
Improving Shaker’s Value Proposition
Following the launch of their new platform version, the client’s brief allowed me to identify three key goals:
- 1Convert freemium users into paid subscribers
- 2Explore the platform without needing a live demo / Streamlining onboarding so new users could sign up
- 3Building confidence to ensure users feel secure and supported once they begin Shaker
After synthesizing the research and getting started on the design process, I came up with four easily digestible pillars of what Shaker does. This guided the redesign of the homepage and platform features:
Manage
contacts of new and existing communities
Connect,
host, and mentor within communities
Monetize
with paid events, memberships or sponsorships
Integrate
with favorite apps and engage contacts where they are
The Research
Research focused on holistically exploring Shaker as a company, as well as testing the existing user flow from the landing page and sign up page, to the onboarding experience and finally to adding contacts in the platform.
Three research methodologies were used for this design sprint:
- 01
Heuristic Evaluation
- 02
Competitive & Comparative Analysis
- 03
User Interviews
1) Heuristic Evaluation
Evaluating Shaker’s existing site against usability benchmarks
10 different categories from the ABBY Method were used for understanding the following four sections of Shaker:
- Landing Page (Existing version; sampling below)
- Signing Up for the platform: (Beta version)
- Creating Community on the platform (Beta version)
- Adding Contacts on the platform (Beta version)
2) Competitive & Comparative Analysis
Where Shaker lies within the industry landscape
While Shaker excels in contact management, polished design, and live demos, its homepage and onboarding needed improvements, and offering on-demand demos could enhance accessibility and user engagement.
SWOT Analysis
- Effectively communicates key offerings
- Valuable features
- Leads in contacting
- Leads in help functions
- Visually very professional
- Obvious call to actions
- Navigational and organizational challenges
- Website doesn't clearly express differentiators from competitors enough to entice people to switch
- Does not express the platform's diverse utilities well enough to give people confidence in signing up
- Overall website copy and word choice to be evaluated
- Restructure pages for a more intuitive flow and clearer emphasis on key information
- Competitors with more multi-page layouts could make their information easier to digest
- Competitors give more accessibility which may create a smoother user experience
Plus / Delta Chart
Pluses
- Professional
- Gets to the point when it comes to logging in
- Color scheme helps with navigating giving a hierarchy on what the priorities are
Deltas
- Very scroll heavy
- Users need to either scroll all the way down or up to sign in
- Too much info on just one landing page may cause issues
Pluses
- Flexible and free to use while providing perks for paying users
- Rich real-time communication popular for fostering communities across interests
Deltas
- Not the best way of sharing documents
- Content can get blurred or distorted
- Not optimized for structured community workflows. More catered towards entertainment
Pluses
- Highly customizable
- All-in-one cohesion (e.g.: integration of social media features, live streams, courses, chat spaces, etc.)
Deltas
- Pricy
- Some advanced features require higher-tier plans
Pluses
- Seems more tailored toward schools
- Integrates many administrative tools
Deltas
- Very crowded
- Large scope may be overwhelming for non-academic use cases
Pluses
- Professional
- Incorporates social media aspects (e.g.: being able to post a portfolio and seeing it on one's account)
Deltas
- Unable to access or create an account through home screen
- Required to schedule a demo if hoping to use.
- No pricing page
3) User Interviews
Understanding Shaker’s existing site and platform
Eight virtual user interviews with a written interview script that confirmed insights from the competitive analysis. Research revealed that Shaker’s value and purpose weren’t fully clear to users, emphasizing the need to redefine its offering in a more direct and understandable way:
Users struggled to understand who the platform was for, how to use it, and why they should sign up, while navigation issues made existing features harder to access.
Highlights included:
Sarah T., 34, Chicago
On understanding Shaker's advantages:
“I want the landing page to clearly explain who the platform is meant for, best use cases, and what ‘Professional communities on autopilot’ means.”
Existing landing page
James R., 41, Miami
On more guidance during onboarding:
“I need clearer onboarding prompts, loading feedback, and secure login confirmation.”
Existing onboarding
Chanel M., 35, Brooklyn
On the improvement of intuitive visual cues:
“I was initially confused by the organization: Labels and buttons weren’t clear, I couldn’t easily see the hierarchy between roles, and not being able to invite members in bulk was frustrating.”
Existing platform
Target Audience
Understanding the User
Maureen M.
42; Houston, TX — Team Manager at public health non-profit “Guiding Hands”
Maureen is the “The Captain of Many Ships” in charge of managing several teams with many different needs.
While she is an expert in her field with a constantly growing company and ever changing team goals, she is not the most tech-savvy and sometimes struggles to keep track of the needs of every single person she is responsible for.
Users like Maureen may include:
- Startup / Accelerator Program Managers
- Nonprofit Membership Coordinators
- Professional Association Managers
- Alumni Relations Managers
- Co-working Community Managers
- Cultural / Sports Club and Recreational League Organizers
The Design
Essential, low-effort features were prioritized for the sprint reflected on the Figma board below. Shaker’s four core pillars identified at the beginning guided the redesign and web copy overhaul before a second round of testing.
Build Out
The following top-level build-outs were prototyped using Shaker’s existing brand assets and style guidelines:
- Simplified and refined the signup and welcome screens, adding content, tooltips, and onboarding cues to build user confidence.
- Designed demo tutorial screens and a dynamic pricing page to support user buy-in and exploration at their own pace.
- Redesigned multiple Contacts pages to be more intuitive and ensure users feel secure using the features.
New Feature Highlights
Quick, 5-10 teaser videos on loop are housed on the landing page itself reflecting each of the four pillars introduced above. Users were sometimes not sure what tools they would benefit from when joining the platform, so giving an immediate understanding of these key points was a top priority for our redesign.
Testing showed that signup was smooth overall, with only minor areas for improvement. We refined it by reducing clutter, adding email double-authentication, and introducing a loading screen for a more responsive experience.
We redesigned the community creation page as an overlay instead of a separate page, reducing whitespace, streamlining the flow, and getting users to the homepage faster while sparking curiosity.
Navigation: Users struggled to navigate the Contacts page and understand button functions, so we improved layout clarity, emphasized key actions, and recommended subtle opt-in tooltips to support smoother community building.
Views and Roles: To make role management more intuitive, we made the Roles feature easier to find, added responsive confirmation popups, and integrated key actions like changing roles and sending invites directly into the Contacts page.
The Results
Usability Testing
Testing the new prototype with potential Shaker members
Key implementations included refined signup and onboarding screens, new demo tutorials and pricing pages, and a redesigned Contacts experience—all prototyped in Figma using Shaker’s brand assets to boost clarity and user confidence.
Users quickly grasped Shaker’s purpose, found the landing page to be clear, and confidence-building, and navigated onboarding smoothly.
Next steps & Opportunities
Where Shaker goes from here
The main user flow spanned from homepage exploration to sign-up and adding contacts. A new Pricing page was introduced—previously missing despite being referenced in the FAQ—to test how and when users look for pricing information and what makes most sense for their usage.
Future tasks with usability testing may include:
- Building out the full payment flow
- Expanded web copy
- Improvement of the accessibility of Roles and Views
- Adding demo video walkthroughs
Metrics
Key metrics include conversion rates from video demos to sign-ups and user retention over time. Once the beta version goes live, using the following tools would be beneficial to install within Shaker behind-the-scenes, to track how often and deeply users engage with the platform; for example, average events attended per member per mo.
Heatmaps and session recordings identify where new users drop off during onboarding and sign-up.
Tracks A/B test landing page and pricing page variations to optimize demo-to-signup conversion.
Auto-tracks clicks and page views on new features without manual tagging, minimizing dev effort.
Baseline for tracking overall site traffic, user demographics, and engagement patterns. Works alongside the other tools to complete the full analytics picture.
Reflection + Closeout
Shaker’s edge is consolidating management, connection, monetization, and integration into one platform. If it can clearly communicate that value to users upfront, it has the potential to serve community managers across every scale, from book clubs to large scale operations.
The biggest lesson was resisting the urge to jump into Figma before the research was solid. Keeping the team grounded in research meant our design decisions were defensible and our scope stayed realistic. Completing the MoSCoW and Feature Priority matrices were the turning point, giving both us and the client confidence in what we could actually deliver when it came to prioritizing the features to work on.
Timeline
A full list of daily completed tasks from the sprint
- Outlined group charter
- Reviewed client information
- Gathered feedback on handling the first client meeting
- Prepared questions for the meeting
- Drafted and sent client introduction email
- Met with clients and established the plan moving forward
- Scheduled follow-up meetings for the next week
- Outlined initial research steps
- Set up platforms (Slack, Shaker, Hotjar, Notion, Google Meet)
- Created Kanban board in Notion to plan the research phase
- Conducted heuristic analysis of Shaker
- Assigned leads and roles
- Began drafting user interview questions
- Set priorities for deliverables in Notion
- Conducted several interviews and scheduled additional sessions
- Reviewed usability test recordings provided by Shaker
- Completed all remaining interviews and transcribed insights
- Refined and repackaged heuristic evaluation, created supporting graphs
- Synthesized data and began building presentation slides
- Met with client to review progress and align on next steps
- Incorporated feedback to adjust design pillars
- Completed affinity mapping to produce “I statements”
- Prepared for design critique
- Completed design critique and reviewed next steps
- Finalized synthesis and early design work, including feature priority matrix and central feature pillars
- Assigned lead and support roles for each pillar to guide design development
- Dedicated full day to hi-fi design in Figma
- Scheduled weekend work to meet upcoming deadline
- Met with clients to provide progress update
- Incorporated feedback to refine hi-fi prototype for round 2 of usability testing
- Edited usability test script and launched second testing round
- Continued developing hi-fi prototype
- Conducted round 2 of usability tests
- Began preparing presentation and project report
- Finalized hi-fi design and transitioned to crafting presentation and project report
- Conducted multiple rehearsal run-throughs in preparation for final presentation
- Met with clients to deliver final presentation