Mentafy

Before

The old experience

The product lacked structure and a clear user flow. Mentafy's core workflow (project creation → writing session → report generation) was spread across loosely connected screens with no sense of progression.

old · project-overview

Old experience: no hierarchy, scattered actions, no clear entry point.

Challenge

The problem

Users struggled to understand how to use the product effectively. The interface created friction at every key step of the core workflow, leading to high drop-off before completion.

01 · Discovery

Finding the real problems before designing anything

An early acquisition push had just landed a record number of sign-ups, but the next step in the funnel, starting a real project, hadn't moved with it. Registrations were up; completion wasn't. That gap was the signal something structural was wrong, not a messaging problem.

I ran a structured heuristic evaluation across all three core product surfaces (project creation, writing session, and report generation) and catalogued 14 distinct friction points by severity and screen.

The critical finding: the primary action, starting a session, was buried three navigation levels deep, visually indistinguishable from secondary controls. This single issue caused the majority of drop-off before completion.

02 · Structuring

Architecture before pixels, always

The original product had no dedicated home state; users entered directly into a project context with no orientation. I proposed a three-tier model: Home for overview, Project for context and session entry, Workspace for focused execution.

This reduced navigation depth from five levels to three, and gave users a mental model that matched how they actually think about their work, before I touched any visual design.

03 · Design & iteration

Three cycles, each answering a specific question

I ran three major design cycles across the core screens, presenting each to the CEO and CTO before moving forward. V1 validated the structural model, V2 established the session layout and a clear action hierarchy, and V3 shipped with the guided checklist.

04 · A team decision

Letting users choose and switch their writing tool

A core friction point sat at sign-up. Mentafy connects to your document through either Microsoft Word or Google Docs, but the original flow locked you in: sign up with Microsoft and you could only use Word, with no path to Google Docs later, and vice versa. Users who picked wrong were stuck.

This wasn't a solo design call. The whole team worked through it. We replaced the forced choice with a "Pick your preferred way to work" step that frames the no-permission Word add-in as recommended, lets users connect OneDrive or Google Drive when they're ready and, critically, allows switching later instead of committing at sign-up.

It didn't move the completion metric directly, but it removed a recurring source of onboarding confusion and support load. It was the kind of structural fix that quietly makes everything downstream work better.

Growth

Website & growth

In parallel to product design, I owned the company website and user-acquisition efforts, from design to implementation and data-driven iteration. It was one of two projects the CTO specifically called out as a standout contribution in my reference letter.