20
Active testing users
6wk
Discovery to live MVP
1
Screen to answer the core question
My role
- Business analysis & requirement elicitation
- Product discovery & strategy
- Product design (flows, wireframes, UI)
- Product engineering
- UAT & release validation
Stack
Business problem
SME founders cannot answer basic questions about their own business finances. Existing bookkeeping tools are accountant-first: dense ledgers, unfamiliar vocabulary, and a setup cost that owners abandon before they see value.
Research & discovery
I interviewed small-business owners across retail and services to map how they actually track cash flow — notebooks, chat threads, memory — and where decisions break down at the end of each week.
Requirements & scope
Hypotheses were tested with prototypes before scope was locked. Findings converged on a lean requirement set optimised for clarity over completeness: plain-language insight, near-zero data entry friction, and one screen that answers 'am I fine this week?'.
Solution
I defined and shipped a six-week MVP: a streamlined dashboard, plain-language insights instead of accounting jargon, and a low-friction entry model that fits an owner's real routine.
Business impact
20 active testing users onboarded with repeat-usage patterns and a strong qualitative demand signal from the target segment — enough validation to justify continued investment.
What I'd carry forward
- Financial products fail on vocabulary long before they fail on features — language is a requirement.
- Cutting the onboarding path in half moved activation more than any feature added afterwards.
- Owners do not want reports; they want a verdict.