When I joined Steven in September 2021, the company had 11 employees—6 of us based in Sweden—and had been operating since 2019. With 90,000 registered users, 15,000 monthly active users, and strong investor backing, Steven was gearing up for its next big play: releasing its own Mastercard, a key project intended to propel the app further.

The previous designer had done an excellent job as a designer in a fast-paced startup environment, but my role was to bring maturity to the company's approach by introducing better processes, planning, and discovery practices.

At the time, the company was halfway through the Mastercard project. I joined the team to support the completion of this work while also beginning to lay the groundwork for scalable design tools, research, and processes that would empower the team to move faster and deliver greater impact.

I worked closely with the development team to ensure alignment. Through workshops, we established shared standards, such as transitioning from hex codes to color variables and adopting typography rules that mapped directly to the product. I also introduced an 8pt grid system, implementing it iteratively to help developers adopt it naturally over time.

To maximize efficiency, I created a dedicated “Views” page within the design system, which showcased the latest released versions of every app screen. These reusable views became a powerful tool for quickly iterating on features, allowing me to start with something 60% complete and focus on refining the details. This approach significantly sped up my ability to deliver updates, from improving expense-sharing features to preparing for the Apple Pay project.

Once the design system was complete, I presented it to the entire team, ensuring everyone—from the CEO to developers—could access and leverage it. Developers and I aligned on every component, fostering a shared understanding of how the system worked and how it would integrate into their workflows.

The design system became an essential tool for Steven, enabling rapid iteration, reducing inconsistencies across platforms, and providing a solid foundation for the company's growth. It allowed the team to move quickly without sacrificing clarity or quality—an invaluable asset in a fast-paced startup environment.

As a small startup, we had limited resources for research. Instead of outsourcing participant recruitment, I developed a process that leveraged our existing customer support system. By creating clear conditions for recruitment and training the team to invite participants, I established a continuous pipeline of users willing to share their experiences. From there, I created a GDPR-compliant research database in Notion to manage insights and ensure raw data was handled responsibly.

With this pipeline in place, I turned to foundational research. I conducted video interviews to uncover the motivations, pain points, and behaviors of our users. A recurring theme emerged: users relied on Steven to “keep track” of shared finances, a sentiment that resonated across nearly all interviews. This insight was key to understanding Steven's role as a source of financial clarity and control in people's lives.

To ensure research had a broader impact, I invited team members from all disciplines—CEOs, engineers, and more—to observe interviews. This approach fostered empathy and aligned the team around the idea that we were building products for people, not abstract “users.”

The insights from these interviews informed personas that became a cornerstone of our product development process. By grounding our decisions in real user needs and behaviors, we were able to validate assumptions, discard outdated ideas, and chart a clearer direction for Steven's evolution. These personas didn't just help us talk about users—they helped us design for people.