Vivo Studio
Founding designer of an all-in-one platform for skills-based athletics studios.
Vivo Studio
- Branding
- Roadmap definition and backlog management
- Product design
- Prototyping
- User testing and interviews
- Web and email design
Founding designer
A better solution for tracking circus training
As an aerial fabric student, I saw that there were no great options for managing a circus school where you need to closely track what skills your students have learned for safety. So, partnering with an engineer, I co-founded Vivo Studio, a comprehensive platform for circus that includes class sign-ups, skill tracking, and curriculum and staff management.
I cover the design/product/go-to-market side of the house and the project has given me the opportunity to completely design an app, brand, and website from 0-1. It's also been a way to experiment with and apply the latest AI approaches to design like managing the design system as code.
With AI tools, a close collaboration, and 30+ years of industry experience, we rapidly designed and built a production grade foundation of the product and alpha tested it in just four months.
Vivo Studio logos
Collaborative planning
To get started with the design, I performed a competitive analysis of athletic skill tracking apps, researched online discussions of studio owners, created a simple prototype, and interviewed admins. With this context, we created a map of features (similar to a user story map) broken into a few releases: Alpha, MVP, and beyond.
Feature mapping in Figjam
Feature tickets for design and engineering work or whatever else is needed are created in Gitlab with estimates, and releases are tracked as milestones so we can forecast and monitor the burn down.
We started with an alpha of the skill-tracking and curriculum management because it was the core innovation with the most UX uncertainty.
The alpha release milestone in Gitlab
Alpha design
I created this demo video from the alpha designs to recruit more feedback and leads at a virtual circus event. It walks through defining curriculum, scheduling classes, student sign-ups, and student achievement and tracking of skills.
Website & waitlist
The first version of the website focuses on recruiting participants for the alpha and invites prospects to sign up to the mailing list.
Landing page of the website
Efficient path to a production grade app
We have a fluid and collaborative dynamic for design and engineering work that is a real joy. As I'm drafting designs, I can quickly get feasibility input and as implementation is happening, I can jump in to answer questions and revise. Along the way, we've been constantly tracking our progress and refining our methods from getting better at estimating tickets to trying different AI coding models and tools.
This has allowed us to rapidly progress from product idea through an alpha test of the production grade, secure and performant progressive web app in just four months. The alpha confirmed the high level of interest for an app of this kind from the circus community and helped us further refine the must haves for the MVP.