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An AI-powered canvas that turns scattered ideas into streamlined prototypes

Indieapp.ai

TL;DR

Design an AI-assisted canvas for chaotic & fragmental creative minds to plan and build their first prototype.

I joined IndieApp in its earliest exploratory stages as a founding designer and strategist, where I was responsible for mapping out target markets and user segments and driving rapid, low-cost experiments that transformed vague product ideas into clear, effective scopes.

ROLE

UX Strategist & Designer

DELIVERABLES

Customer Discovery

Market Research

Opportunity Analysis

Feature Prioritization

Motion Design

UX/UI

Customer Validation/PMF

Value Proposition

RESULT

We secured over 100 waitlists and a 2% willingness to pay, proving our early appeal and raising over $50k+ USD in pre-seed funding.

SO WHAT'S INDIEAPP

Helping millions of aspiring interdisciplinary entrepreneurs and PMs transform chaotic insights into organized products

Imagine you’re an ambitious founder with deep expertise in logistics, psychology, or fitness. You see a clear market opportunity, yet struggle to convert your industry insights, case studies, visual references into a consistent, workable prototype. That’s what IndieApp is dealing with — to transform that scattered insights or ideas into an streamlined digital product.

CHALLENGE

Explore and validate problem-solution fit for an AI app prototyping venture

The IndieApp founding team reached out with an ambitious vision and a few rough UI drafts: They wanted to turn their vision into a product that customers would actually love and resonate with. However founders weren't not sure where they should start and what the product should look like - should they build a landing page, conduct customer interviews, or build an entire MVP? At the same time, the team wanted to feature the product experience as the highlight in an overheated market.


Together with the IndieApp team, we charted out the plan of attack. Here's how I captained the adventure:

  1. Customer Discovery (Week 1-2): Conducted rapid interviews with 12 prospective customers — 4 entrepreneurs, 3 product managers, 2 designers, and 3 college students — and identified solo entrepreneurs as the primary segment. Refined customer persona and customer journey.

  2. Opportunity Synthesis & Prioritization (Week 3): Evaluated opportunity areas and selected the “Add Reference → Generate PRD → View Demo” happy path via an Impact-vs-Effort matrix.

  3. Prototype & Smoke Test (Weeks 4): Developed the pitch and narrative, produced a 90-second explainer video, and embedded a click-through waitlist link to test solution desirability. Launched the test on LinkedIn and r/startups.

  4. PMF Signal Analysis & Reflection (Week 5-8): Monitored key metrics—waitlist sign-ups, click-through rate, purchase-intent rate, and funds committed—and held 25 follow-up interviews with users and investors to pinpoint areas for improvement.

APPROACH

Led a design-driven prototype validation

Since our engineering resources were limited, I decide to take a design-driven approach to test our solutions. I produced an explainer video that walks potential audience through how the product works and why it matters to them.

The benefits are obvious — we released our material and saw the user feedback swiftly in one week without over-reliance on the engineering resources. Also we prevented the risk to committing any product development efforts to a presumed solution.

We released the video to our target communities, using their feedback to validate our direction and generate early traction.

This was how design empowered in the validation stage:


  1. User-centered storytelling:

    I led the storyboard and script for the explainer video, anchoring each scene in the customer journey so users immediately resonates with their own "headaches"—and our “cure.”


  2. Consistent visual language:
    I defined a four-colour palette and a cohesive set of UI components and style guidelines that will scale with future scenarios, from product development to marketing.


  1. Emotional design via micro-interaction:
    We are designed for non-technical creatives — thus, I crafted warm, welcoming micro interaction that humanise the AI assistant and reduce audience potential resistance.


    Why is it a problem? I did some secondary research:

What Workers Really Want from Artificial Intelligence

A Stanford study captures the gap between workers desires and AI's abilities, and highlights areas ripe for research and development.

  1. Backed up the venture’s vision with user-centered evidence:

    For promotion, I co-developed a concise pitch deck with founders. I converted core metrics and business models into concise infographics, referring user feedback to strengthen our investor pitch.

HIGHLIGHTS

With IndieApp team, we gained some early traction—

Click to view more

Secured 100+ waitlisted in month one

With this data, we validate our early market appeal. However, based on user feedback, we didn't see a high urgency from users "wanting" this product. We need to figure out how to convert initial curiosity into urgency by doubling-down on interviews and refining the highest-impact use cases.

Attracted 2% willingness-to-pay

Good news were some users see enough value to put money on the table. However, we can’t confirm if users are going to constantly pay for this tool. The business model is what team needs to figure out.

Gained spots in 3+ famous accelerators and raised $50k+ pre-seed funds

Those signal showed that investors recognized strong market potential and team execution.

However, some investors requested to back up the momentum with retention metrics and community-based engagement data to unlock the next funding milestone.

LEARNINGS

Act first, validate later

Design process can be flawed. Be bold to ask, assume and build first, and validate later. There’s not always a time for in-depth research & well-formed interviews.

Be honest with customer feedback

Hearing customers without personal biases and resistance helps team grow in the right direction and expose the area we need to work on.

UX is important, but that’s not all

In the early-stage startup, traction is way stronger in storytelling than nice UI.

Not every data is strong enough to get invested

Retention rate speak much stronger than fast growth — it tells how loyal customer would be and sustainable business growth.