After COVID-19 our online social spheres expanded at the cost of live, in-person interaction. My focus was designing a system that would fit into people’s existing lives and support them in exploring their local community, reflecting Vane’s main goal: to encourage offline connection.

During my time at Vane, I worked closely with the founder team to finalize and execute their product vision. As the rest of our team came from an engineering background, I led weekly instructional design meetings to familiarize the team with design thinking and problem solving. I also created a cohesive brand image and established a design language for future members of the team.

One of my biggest challenges at Vane was the freedom that came with being the main designer on the team. Having a blank canvas meant I could play with different design directions. However, it also meant that anything and everything was up for debate. Navigating the teams diverse backgrounds meant aligning everyone’s product vision and learning to communicate with non-designers. To face this challenge, I led educational meetings on design thinking, allowing everyone to better understand our goals as a team. By incorporating the rest of the team into the design process, we were able to become an agile design & development team.