POSTIE
POSTIE
Role
Product Designer
Scope
I created Postie to help small business owners thrive in the digital landscape. By leveraging AI to simplify daily content creation and elevate their social media game, I built a one-stop shop for seamless and effective content creation.
Timeline
6 months
Sept - March 2025
My journey as a small business owner
In September 2023, I found myself at crossroads. After burning out from a bootcamp and diving straight into startups, I was torn between maintaining that intense work ethic or finally pursuing a life goal — starting my own business, creating something I genuinely adored. My UX contracts had just ended, leaving me with the freedom to pivot in any direction. I took a leap of faith and turned what started as a hobby into a press-on nail business.
Of course, this led to another round of burnout and overwhelming anxiety as a newly minted entrepreneur. But if you asked me if I’d do it again? My answer would be a resounding YES — for the thousands of lessons I learned, the resilience I gained, and how it ultimately led me back to Postie.
Introduction:
Current Situation:
The vicious entrepreneurial cycle
At the heart of all new businesses, theres an entrepreneur feeding themselves to their work on a 24 hour cycle. In the early stages of their business, small business owners often work between 52 to 80 hours per week, with North American studies showing averages of 54 to 59 hours weekly due to labor shortages and business demands.
CFIB Survey 2023.
A day in the life.
On average entrepreneurs carry 2-5+ roles everyday. Most small business owners juggle between wearing multiple hats on a 9+ hour work day and still do not find enough time to finish their tasks. In other words, you can imagine their day to day to include roles like:
Sourcing and Manufacturing
Branding and Packaging
Maintaining Business Policies
Managing Web and E-commerce
Content Creation and Photoshoots
Inventory and Logistics
Maintaining Marketing on Social Media
Customer Retention
Daunting right?
So where do we go from here?
Let’s pull back and take a look at what entrepreneurs are struggling to manage most in today’s market.
At the home of entrepreneurship, building an audience at the start is crucial in driving a successful business in the digital age.
Is it the thrill of having to juggle multiple roles all at once in hopes that being a machine will pay off? Maybe, but for most it’s probably not that. At the end of the day, entrepreneurs are also humans who need a break. Leveraging existing tools that can reduce hours of time is incredible, but what if there’s a way we can enhance these existing tools so business owners can start focusing less on organizing clutter and more on things that truly matter.
Market Research:
Finding the gaps
Research indicates that content creation and social media marketing are among the most time-consuming tasks for entrepreneurs.
This illustration of a journey map provides insight of a small business owner’s current experience with content creation.
Platforms like Hootsuite, Buffer, SocialPilot have excelled in providing assistance in content creation for businesses with extensive services like scheduling, analytics, and collaboration. However, despite the wide range of available platforms, entrepreneurs still face significant challenges.
A study by Intuit QuickBooks revealed that 21% of entrepreneurs spend over 7 hours daily on social media for their businesses, with the average being 4 hours per day.
So taking this analysis into consideration, I was able to centre my interview demographics specific to a group of newly minted small business owners using content marketing platforms. Here’s what I gathered from decontextualized interviews:
❌ Complexity – Many platforms have steep learning curves, making them difficult for non-marketers to navigate.
❌ Limited Market Research Tools – While platforms track performance, they don’t provide competitor analysis or customer insights to help businesses refine their content strategy.
❌ AI-Driven Personalization – Most platforms don’t offer tailored content suggestions or strategy recommendations based on specific market data.
❌ Centralized Platform – No single platform effectively combines market research, content creation, and scheduling into an all-in-one, user-friendly solution.
Opportunity:
Streamline workflows, maximize growth
The core problem isn’t the lack of platforms — it’s that existing solutions are often fragmented, expensive, and difficult to use. For new entrepreneurs, an intuitive platform that combines market research, AI-driven content creation, and social media management into a single, streamlined solution is essential for building a strong online presence without the hassle. The agenda?
A comprehensive platform that integrates planning, content creation, and management with the help of AI optimization, so that we can reduce complexity, enhance consistency, and free up time for users to focus on creativity and business growth.
Designing Within Constraints:
Early ideation, user testing, and mid scale wireframes
As I started the designs for Postie, I was inspired by several market competitors like Assembly’s calendar, Plot’s fascinating reels, and countless AI tools for businesses and teams alike. However, this time I focused on new entrepreneurs, who are predominantly first-time users of content marketing platforms, and shaped the design around the tools that would best suit their needs.
Early sketches highlighted core components that would be included
Once I transitioned from sketches to pixels, I knew it was time to bring my vision to life in a more tangible form. My goal was to create a very early version of a minimum viable product (MVP) — something that felt real enough for users to engage with and provide meaningful feedback. I wanted to understand not just how the product looked, but how it functioned and resonated with users. By crafting a mid-fidelity prototype, I aimed to simulate the real user experience, allowing me to test the content creation flow, market research insights, and overall usability. The feedback I gathered from these sessions became invaluable, helping me refine the experience and align it more closely with the needs of small business owners. Here’s what I discovered:
Matcha Tea Business Example: Initial Login Screen
Matcha Tea Business Example: User Creates Post
Matcha Tea Business Example: Review and Edit Post Screen
Matcha Tea Business Example: User’s Inbox and Approvals
New and Improved Postie:
Introducing AI product demos, refined post creation, templates, and more!
Building on insights from user feedback and market research, I crafted high-fidelity wireframes that introduced key features like customizable templates to simplify content creation, AI-driven product demos to guide users through the platform, and a more streamlined post creation flow. I also redesigned the calendar layout to make scheduling more intuitive and visually clear — ensuring that even first-time users could feel confident and in control from day one.
Plan With Precision: New and Improved Calendar
In redesigning the post creation screens, the initial pop-up card was transformed into a more cohesive and complete flow. As I reflected on the design goal and analyzed insights from user testing, I realized there needed to be a stronger hook that not only allowed new entrepreneurs to leverage AI but also help them overcome the fear of product demos and script writing. After all, reducing time and pain is the core reason why Postie exists for content creation. So, I developed a more intuitive AI model featuring AI Avatars for instant product demoing — eliminating the hassle of filming and studio setups.
Here’s a look at how the flow might work for a nail business owner:
The initial iterations of the reviews screen raised mixed concerns. Users felt that information delivery could have been presented more effectively, and elements like notes and chats felt redundant at this stage of the flow. Taking these insights into account, I revised the review screen to better align with user needs and added key enhancements such as in-web shortcut tools and posting tips to help business owners create better content more efficiently.
Lastly, I introduced preset templates after uncovering strong interest during early interviews and user testing. There was significant positivity from early business owners — especially those new to content creation — seeking an easier way to produce more content. One solution was custom templates tailored to business goals and current trends. These AI-generated templates adapt to trending topics, making content creation faster and more effective.
The featured example, ‘Welcome Brand Intro,’ offers a step-by-step guide to crafting an engaging brand introduction, helping users make a strong first impression. This tool not only simplifies brainstorming but also ensures content remains fresh and on-brand.
Stay On Top of Posting with Templates
Looking Forward:
Integrating Postie Analytics and Key Learnings
As the project progressed, with hundreds of failed attempts and countless pivots, it became a bittersweet moment to see how far Postie had come. I tackled challenges like integrating analytics for post tracking, balancing feature scope, and managing technical constraints. The lessons from those failures didn’t just bring self-doubt — they also sparked an overwhelming sense of gratitude as I watched Postie take shape piece by piece.
Moving forward, efforts will focus on enhancing analytics for post performance and further refining collaboration tools to better support both individual and team workflows.