Weave

A team for three people (2 engineers, 1 designer) created Weave while working inside Intuit. This write up describes my involvement from the very beginning. I lead the design, at times by myself and at times with other designers. I also contributed to the engineering effort when it was needed. Weave has been downloaded in over 100 countries and it is used by over half a million people.

The beginning.

We started with a problem space not a product. The space between personal and established business owner is where many people find themselves when they start a business. They don’t need complex accounting software yet, but they do have several problems. After months of research and finding anyone that would talk to us, we deciding one of these problems was getting organized. Of all the personal and business tasks they could be doing, what is the most important thing to do next? That is what we set out to solve. Tasks change everyday so we wanted to create a product that could be used anywhere. We decided to focus on a mobile web application to quickly test features.

We got 5 people to agree to use our mobile web product and meet with us for regular feedback sessions over a number of weeks. I would even make one off wireframes of new ideas with their real data just to get an authentic reaction. At this point whatever was faster, design or engineering, is what the team did.

Three wireframes for three different people using our product in the early days.

An early "Feed" to let you know what you have to do, where you have to be, and any money activity.

Prototyping and getting to market

After the feature set for the first version was stable, the team considered the technology for the first production version. We decided to build a native iOS application and I quickly got to work to define the structure and workflows for the first version. I used powerpoint animations, static screens, and native code to test ideas with users and finalize the design. Within 12 weeks it was live in the App Store.

First time use

In order for users to understand the benefit of Weave, a directed experince was created.This included a welcome screen and an interactive walk-through to create a task and assigned it to a project. A final congratulations screen completes the first time use.

What to build next?

With very limited resources, each member on the team acted as the PM. We always had a backlog of ideas and we used a number of factors to decide what to build. Usage data from the app, feedback from a variety of sources, and the team’s vision all played a role in ranking the backlog. Keeping in mind the overall metric of active usage, each idea also needed a clear reason why active usage would be improved.

Data is always great. With cohort data we could see how each update to the application affected active usage. I loved seeing the postive results over time.

A lesson in signing up.

In the original version, the user was asked to sign up on the first screen. This was a source of negative reviews and we saw a 50% drop off rate between downloads and app usage. In order for new users to understand the benefit of the app, I designed an experience where they could use the app without an account. At any time they could sign up from inside the app and take advantage of features that required an account.