Sphere
Saved £250,000 in development costs and secured acquisition by Twitter.
Services: UX/UI Product Design, User Testing & Product Discovery
Sphere was a community-based messaging and knowledge-exchange app with the mission of bonding people online. Sphere was led by CEO Nick D'Aloisio and venture capital funded ($30M+) by investors including Index Ventures, Horizons Ventures, Mike Moritz and Brian Chesky.
My Role:
As a product designer and early team member, I worked on shaping the user experience and refining key features to improve engagement and drive user retention, a key metric for investors.
Objectives:
Validate new user-centric features which fostered online community engagement.
Identify any friction points or potential issues for users.
Key Contributions:
Designed the product across iOS, Android and web to create a seamless and consistent experience.
Conducted usability testing to validate design decisions and optimise feature adoption.
Learned what users were not comfortable with sharing to their social circle.
Identified a proposed feature that users strongly disliked. This insight prevented its development, saving the company £250,000.
Impact and Results:
Prevented an unnecessary £250,000 development expense and a potential PR issue.
Delivered a more intuitive and engaging product experience.
The product’s design and messaging capabilities contributed to Sphere’s acquisition by Twitter.
App Design
Desktop Design
What the client said
“Working with Michael at Sphere was an absolute joy, particularly in our product discovery. Michael’s ability to make people feel at ease created an environment where every user testing participant felt valued and comfortable, opening up a space for genuine, honest feedback.
This approach allowed us to gain a much deeper understanding of our users, transforming not just our product development process but making our product more meaningful to our users.”
James May
Product Lead
Meta (ex-Sphere)
