Designing for the Power User
A consultant-facing political ad platform, built from research to beta
Role: Lead Product Designer, Strategy, Research, Design Systems, Accessibility
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Adobe CC, Respondent, Calendly
Impact: Designed a consultant-facing political ad platform from 0 to beta launch, achieving 10% user migration within the first two weeks.
About Company
SpeakEasy Political helps political candidates run digital and mail campaigns.
The Media Studio was a net new platform built for a higher-value segment: political consultants managing multiple campaigns across different clients.
Challenge
Building a net new platform for political consultants meant starting from scratch on every front. No design system, no existing patterns, a small cross-functional team, and a user segment operating under serious time pressure. Before anything could be designed, the work had to be understood.
Before the First Screen
Before designing anything new, I audited the existing SpeakEasy platform for heuristic and accessibility issues. The goal was to understand what to carry forward and what to leave behind.
What the audit revealed:
- • Color contrast failures and inconsistent font hierarchy throughout
- • Linear flows that made multitasking impossible for power users
- • A homepage with no utility for someone managing multiple clients
The findings gave the business a clear case for a new visual identity. Familiar layout patterns were intentionally carried into the new product to reduce the learning curve for migrating users.
Figuring Out The Product First
Political consultants operate under real pressure. Campaign deadlines are fixed and there is no time to learn a tool that does not work intuitively from day one. Understanding this user was the foundation everything else was built on.
I led three research rounds: persona definition through interviews and card sorting, mid-build usability testing, and a final validation round at beta. Recruiting, scheduling, and synthesis were all handled by me.
Mapping Before Designing
With research complete, the next step was making sense of it all before opening Figma. I mapped the full product by hand: every screen, every flow, and every decision about what this platform needed to do.
Sketching was the fastest way to pressure-test the information architecture and think through the full consultant journey before any high-fidelity work began.
Building the System While Shipping
There was no design system to inherit. I built one from scratch while UX, UI, and development were all happening in parallel. Components were created, handed off, and built by the dev team in real time.
To keep the product moving in the right direction, I facilitated workshops with the engineering lead and front-end developer to define MVP scope and set feature priorities for beta. Design and development stayed aligned from day one.
“This is one of the most organized handoffs I’ve worked with. It saved us hours of back-and-forth.”
– Front-End Developer, SpeakEasy Political
Designing for the Power User
With the system in place and the team aligned, design moved into the core product experience.
The dashboard needed to do more than display data. Usability testing confirmed the original layout needed reorganization to surface the right information at a glance for someone managing multiple clients at once.
The bigger decision was the campaign creation flow. I proposed replacing the legacy linear wizard with a flexible builder: consultants could add information gradually, save drafts, and return when ready. Testing validated it as the clear winner.
Beta Launch & Early Traction
The Media Studio launched in beta in August 2022. Within the first two weeks, 10% of existing users had migrated to the new platform, an early signal that the product was meeting real consultant needs from day one.
- The beta marked the completion of a full 0 to 1 design cycle: from audit and research through system building, validation, and ship.
Want to try out the Interactive Prototype? Reach out to me!
What I Learned
This project taught me what I am capable of when given real ownership. Managing research, system building, cross-functional alignment, and product decisions simultaneously, without a playbook, confirmed that I could operate at a level I had not fully tested before.
A few things I carry forward from this work:
- • Research is only valuable if you fight for it. Getting budget for multiple rounds was not automatic, but the product was better because of it.
- • Building a design system in parallel with active development is hard but possible with strong team communication and trust.
- • Designing under ambiguity is a skill. When the brief is incomplete, the work is figuring out the right questions before reaching for the right answers.
