Granate

Overview

Granate's first brand was a quick way to launch. As the company matured, a rebrand became essential. I did not just redesign the app visually, I also shipped key usability improvements.

Navigation

User interviews kept flagging navigation as a pain point. After a full audit, I redesigned it by reducing variations, cutting redundant sub navigation, and using common UI patterns for a more intuitive experience.

Onboarding

After the first usability and brand updates, onboarding stood out. There was a big drop off between opening the app and reaching the homepage, largely because onboarding could not be skipped. As part of the new system, I pitched and shipped a skip option at the end of account creation.

That let new users bypass onboarding, which lifted conversion and grew the user base, a key factor for investor interest.

Building for the future

I rebuilt every component under the new brand and tuned it for usability. A core goal was a system that supports a larger design team, so I made dedicated Figma pages per component type for easy discovery.

Delivery

With a small dev team, brand and design updates often took a back seat. Rolling out a full system, my priority was a graceful, segmented release. I broke it into chunks and mocked up key screens to show the app after each phase. With the PM, we pulled Skip Onboarding out of the larger scope to ship it sooner.

I elevated the Granate brand and shipped real user improvements, all within a small team.

Overview

Granate's core mission is to ease the burden of loss and reduce isolation. The community feature serves that directly.

Problem

Users seek connection to navigate loss, and need a space for stories and engagement through sharing, liking, and commenting. We also needed in app content submission for email curation.

Feature list

• Story submission and viewing
• Profile and management
• Notifications
• In app submission flow

User flow

I mocked up MVP user flows, and after team discussion we settled the direction. One key debate was social sharing of posts and visibility to non users. We prioritized security and blocked it entirely.

Wireframes

Early collaboration made the move from flows to wireframes smooth and cleared up unknowns before UI. I sketched each flow and key interaction to align with the dev team and prevent scope creep.

Prototype

This shipped before the new design system, so it was constrained by the existing UI. I added a few new patterns, carefully, to stay close to the interface. Try the notifications flow below.

The feature drove a ~30% lift in weekly engagement across daily active users, retention, and content.

Overview

Granate aims to simplify the post loss journey, guiding users through tasks without overwhelming them. Feedback kept flagging trouble prioritizing tasks and seeing what mattered at each stage. Our content was accurate, but the way we surfaced it needed work.

Problem

• Users are overwhelmed and lack clear next steps for time sensitive tasks
• Users need to trust that Granate surfaces the most critical items for them
• We were not using collected data to personalize the experience

Audit

I started by auditing every task and question, mapping how questions trigger subtasks and what else in the app influences them.

Priority and due dates

Next I analyzed task prioritization and due dates.

Responsibility scale

From there I built a sliding scale of responsibility. A grieving spouse and an executor managing an estate have different needs, so we ask qualifying questions to set the role, then recommend relevant tasks and hide the rest.

Not yet shipped, this defined the app's future: a personalized experience with guided flows and prioritized tasks.