Product Designer & Founder @octostudioco — helping founders build products that actually work • Mom of a girl 🐣 Book a call → cal.com/octostudio/15min
Toronto, Canada
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What a difference twelve months makes.
In January, I was focused on the next promotion at my 9-5 job. Today, I’m wrapping up the year as a business owner, a mom to a toddler, and a future resident of Canada.
This year wasn't a straight line. It was a total reinvention.
After an unexpected career shift, I decided to stop looking for "safe" jobs and started building my own thing. Oh, and I did it with an infant on my hip.
Building a business while raising a baby isn’t what it looks like on Instagram. There was no glamorous hustle culture. Just SaaS designs done with a baby monitor on the desk and French lessons crammed in late at night to prepare for our visa applications.
And it paid off. My husband’s startup got accepted, and we are relocating next month.
I’m tired, but my definition of security has changed. It’s not about a paycheck from someone else anymore; it’s about what I can build with my own two hands.
Thanks to everyone who hired me, helped me, and cheered us on.
See you in Canada! 🇨🇦 ✈️
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September has been busy, and I’m glad it has.
Working from home today, grateful for the momentum and excited for the new deals coming our way.
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Your color palette isn’t decoration.
It shapes whether your brand feels premium, approachable, bold, calm, or trustworthy.
For founders, the question isn’t just “Do I like these colors?”
It’s “Is this how I want my brand to feel?”
My recent color explorations for a branding
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You can lose a customer during signup without ever knowing why.
I designed 18 screens for a signup flow.
Only 1 is the happy path.
The other 17 handle what goes wrong: wrong password, expired link, existing email, lost connection.
That’s where signups are won or lost.
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Founders do not need a designer who only makes the product look good.
They need someone who can tell them which part of the product should not exist yet.
That is product design.
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I’ve been trying something new lately: taking my iPad and finding new places to work and paint.
This was Dundas, which I explored for the first time.
I’ll work for a bit, draw for a bit, walk around, find a coffee shop… and somehow get to know a new place along the way.
Maybe this is my favorite part of working remotely.
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The problem wasn’t the AI or the dashboard.
It was that users had to look at a screen full of numbers and figure out what changed, what was unusual, and what actually deserved their attention.
That’s work the product should be doing for them.
Your AI can be right and still kill retention.
I recently met a founder whose product had accurate data and a great dashboard, but users still had to figure out what mattered.
Data isn’t value.
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Make the AI interpret its own output.
Ask it: What changed this week? What looks unusual? What should the user care about?
Then put that insight at the top in one clear sentence, with the dashboard underneath as the proof
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And when users have to work to find the value, they don’t necessarily complain. They just stop coming back.
The fix isn’t more data, another chart, or a prettier dashboard.
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Your AI can be right and still kill retention.
I recently met a founder whose product had accurate data and a great dashboard, but users still had to figure out what mattered.
Data isn’t value.
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I AM NOT looking to connect with:
• Designers who only talk about pixels
• Corporate climbers
• “Per my last email” enthusiasts
• People who "love networking"
I want internet friends who design things they care about, build weird stuff, book a flight just because get excited about discovering a new place
I’m probably at my happiest when I’m somewhere completely new, figuring things out as I go.
Build something.
Go somewhere.
Disappear for a while.
Come back with a new idea.
That’s my kind of networking.
I AM NOT looking to connect with:
• Corporate climbers
• Growth hackers
• Indie hackers who never fail
• People who say “let’s hop on a quick call”
I want internet friends who build apps, disappear to SEAsia, go diving on a Tuesday and randomly decide to learn kitesurfing
Build weird stuff
Travel the world
Disappear again
That’s my kind of networking
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If your designer answers all four questions easily, you are in better hands than you think.
If you are looking at something right now and cannot tell, send it to me. My messages are open.
Most founders cannot tell whether the design work they are paying for is any good. So they approve it, and find out from users later.
I sit on the other side of those reviews. The founders who get the most out of them ask the same four questions every time.
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Most founders cannot tell whether the design work they are paying for is any good. So they approve it, and find out from users later.
I sit on the other side of those reviews. The founders who get the most out of them ask the same four questions every time.
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3 - What did you leave out, and why?
Good design is mostly deciding what not to put on a screen. Someone who cannot tell you what they left out has not made decisions. They have arranged things.
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2 - Where did the user come from, and where do they go next?
Screens look fine one at a time. They fall apart in a row. This catches it in ten seconds.
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1 - What problem does this screen solve?
If the answer takes more than a sentence, nobody has decided what the screen is for yet.
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One of the most expensive design mistakes for a startup? Starting with screens before deciding what the product should feel like. You end up redesigning everything when the brand direction changes.
I’ve started designing a new app, and the first decision is not a screen. It is the feeling the product should create when someone meets it for the first time.
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