Overview
What does it mean to be Irish? Through user research and generative methods, we found an unmet need in the world. Customers wanted to explore deeper into their DNA, beyond a pie chart, and know “what does it mean Irish/Norwegian/German” and more.
Mosaic helps people connect with cultures, traditions, values, lifestyles, foods, and more from the DNA they inherited from around the world.
About
Background and Team
Working with VP’s of Design and Product, I lead a team of designers through multiple, iterative design challenges to find a single, simple way for people to explore cultures related to them. Our team consistend of 4 designers, plus myself as a contributing designer, along with 14 engineers and 2 product managers. This was a tight-knit bunch set of releasing a brand new app within a 10 week timeline.
Engineers
14
Designers, including me
5
Product managers
2
Ten weeks from design start to release on the Ancestry DNA app.
About
Getting There
We started with a large set of teams utilizing design sprints to get started. Teams worked from a prototype showcasing the product vision and strategy. Through multiple iterations and beta releases on the web, we found that customers were seemingly not interested in the experience. Our product lacked cohesion and rationale, and was complicated with messy navigation.
In the last half of the year, the design team came together to formulate a new strategy. We focused on a sole platform and worked to create a simple experience that could span and scale. Multiple concepts were created and tested, eventually simplifying down to a core experience. But we had a tight timeline to release by the holiday season. With ten weeks of design and development work, we released Mosaic on the Ancestry DNA app on December 20, 2019. Over the next month we measured our metrics and hypothesis and found that our new experience was hitting on all metrics.
Overview
Highlights
Key moments and responsibilities
10 weeks
from design start to shipping on the Ancestry DNA app
Released 20 December 2019, after a year of learning from the web.
Design Details
Ancestry Mosaic was a breakthrough experience allowing customers to dive into the traditions and cultures of their past, which are often lost over time. This product was released as a Beta in December 2019, and was just a small sliver of the entire product we wanted to release. The following screens are shown via the iOS app.
This is a high-level overview. In interviews and presentations I go deeper on strategy, process, and my direct contribution — get in touch if you'd like to see it.
