I led a product redesign that focused on improving clarity, context, and wayfinding, ultimately growing the product from 0 to over 30K monthly active users before being sunset due to funding constraints.
Grafiti was a chart search engine aimed at making data more accessible by curating visualizations from open, credible sources. (FRED, BLS, WHO, Our World in Data to name a few.)
As co-founder and lead product designer, I designed the platform from the ground up: from conducting user research, designing the user experience, user interface, setting up design systems, and running usability tests. The biggest challenges were finding harmony between two different design paradigms (a search engine and a data visualization tool) and balancing openness with credibility when helping users navigate sparse or unfamiliar content.
This project taught me the critical difference between designing for users and designing for customers.
MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS
-31%
DECREASE IN BOUNCE RATES
+50%
INCREASE IN RETENTION RATES
DEAD
END
We synthesized insights from our interviews into two primary personas to clarify who we were designing for and what they needed from the product. The first was the Data Journalist, seeking fresh angles and visual references for timely stories. The second, the On-the-Go Analyst, needed a fast, lightweight way to surface trends and extract insights with minimal friction. These personas helped anchor our design decisions around real user goals and behaviors.
To align around user needs and business goals, I facilitated a “How Might We…” workshop centered on our key outcomes. We landed on two guiding questions:
How might we help Data Journalists explore past coverage across diverse publishers?
How might we streamline content consumption to reduce friction?
From these prompts, we established core design principles to guide our decision-making. These principles helped ensure our redesign was rooted not just in usability, but in values that resonated with both our users and our mission.
The next challenge was to weave these design principles and ideas into a cohesive product experience that achieve the key outcomes we expect for our personas. I always start my process with some sketching and paper prototyping. I find that this allows me to focus on big picture ideas while moving quickly early in the process.
Below are some sketches and early prototypes of this exploration.
With the goal of making reliable data more accessible, our team built a chart search engine that surfaced visual content from trusted, reputable sources. In a digital landscape crowded with noise and misinformation, we focused on curating high-quality, credible insights in one centralized, easy-to-navigate platform.
This design helped us grow our userbase to the tune of 30K MAU, helped us raise a 1M dollar seed round, and get into Tech Stars NY (which we declined)
Shortly after raising that round, our team decided to pivot into building a B2B search tool to chase profitability using the same Grafiti search technology.
Here are a few notable pieces of praise and feedback after we launched the redesign:
Users Aren’t Always Customers
One of the biggest lessons I took away from Grafiti was understanding the difference between having users and having a viable business. By the time we shut down, we had grown to over 30,000 monthly active users: journalists, analysts, and curious readers who found real value in the tool. But without a sustainable business model or institutional funding, we couldn’t justify the infrastructure costs tied to OCR, cloud services, and ongoing development.
We faced real challenges: a market (newsrooms) that lacked purchasing power, high infrastructure costs (OCR, cloud services), and fundraising headwinds during the pandemic. Despite the traction, we ultimately had to shut the lights off.
Since then, I’ve become much more curious about the business side of product design. Whether I’m joining a company or starting something new, I now ask early questions about sustainability and revenue models. If monetization is part of the goal, I try to consider it from the start, not just as a business concern, but as a design constraint that can meaningfully shape what we build and how we prioritize.
