Mural Mega Research Board
Context
This project reimagines the legacy yearbook-creation platform at TreeRing. Over 15 years old, the editor and marketplace tools had begun to underperform: sluggish responsiveness, broken layouts, reliance on external apps for basic tasks, and high customer support burden. I worked as Senior Product Designer over a 4-month sprint to research user pain points, define strategic AI opportunities, and deliver a prioritized product roadmap.
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Editors and parents struggled with slow performance, confusing workflows, and unreliable layout tools.
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Many users abandoned the platform or resorted to third-party tools.
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Support tickets and reprint orders were high, signaling usability breakdown and lost trust.
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The platform’s outdated experience hindered sales demos and prevented future growth.
Problem
User Interviews & Key Insights
Compeitive Research and AI Market
Why It Matters
These UX failures were bleeding the business. High support costs, poor user satisfaction, and lost opportunities for upselling threatened both retention and future revenue growth. TreeRing needed more than incremental fixes, it needed a strategic, AI-enabled transformation to stay competitive and rebuild user confidence.
My Role & What I Did
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Led mixed-methods research: user interviews (customers, service, sales), support & NPS data analysis.
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Merged qualitative + quantitative insights to map systemic pain points.
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Built a prioritization matrix to assess feasibility vs. impact of potential AI / product interventions.
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Designed a set of high-value AI features (e.g. auto layout suggestion, smart photo curation, guided workflows).
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Produced a lean roadmap aligned with business cycles (editor, marketplace, parent dashboard, support automation).
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Presented findings + strategic recommendations to stakeholders.
Low Fidelity Wireframes and Concepts
AI Opportunity Matrix
Key Decisions & Strategic Moves
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Focus on high-impact areas: performance, layout usability, image/photo workflows.
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Use AI not as buzzword, but as pragmatic tool to reduce friction, manual toil, and support load.
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Introduce a roadmap that phases improvements to balance immediate wins with long-term scalability..
Roadmapping The Future
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Identified new opportunities to integrate AI across the entire TreeRing Yearbook platform, including marketplace touchpoints, to help increase sales of physical products.
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Outlined a scalable multi-version approach for introducing an intelligent virtual assistant, ensuring each iteration could be tested and validated with both internal teams and real users.
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Clarified how each AI component would function, why it mattered and how it would support every team including sales, engineering and stakeholders, creating alignment across the organization
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Developed a holistic AI roadmap detailing where and when to implement features, how each sector of the platform would be impacted and how priorities aligned with technical feasibility and stakeholder needs
Impact & Expected Benefits
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Realigned product toward user needs and business goals, reduced risk of churn.
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Set foundation for long-term AI-powered growth: smarter workflows, less reliance on customer support & third-party tools.
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Positioned TreeRing to re-launch with competitive differentiation, modern UX, and scalable infrastructure.
Want to get in touch? Chat? See pictures of my dog?
