As a product leader, I collaborated with Daniel and Farhan in building and validating various ideas, ultimately creating an intelligent employee directory with a fun game to help team members get to know each other. I developed clickable prototypes, conducted interviews with potential users in the Toronto area, and worked with our engineering team to build a functional app. Launched in 2016, the Helpful directory and game proved successful in our initial tests.
In 2017, we explored adding ephemeral video messages to the directory to address the issue of remote team members missing morning standup meetings. My role at Helpful involved working as product lead, managing a product designer, interfacing with product management and engineering, and collaborating with our machine learning/data science experts. We launched various experiments, including training the system to help users find someone who could assist with specific tasks, transcribing videos, learning from transcripts, and exploring augmented reality and generative recommendations.
Helpful's app evolved into a short-format video messaging suite for team and manager feedback. I led the product and engineering team in implementing a comprehensive design system and product exploration/iteration cycle. Our feature exploration, user testing, build, launch, and measurement practices resulted in an enterprise communication tool utilized by small business owners with remote employees, banks for employee feedback and executive updates, and major airlines for asynchronous communication across vast distances at airports.
