Selected work
Pause
Overview
Pause is a time off management tool that aims to help organisations keep on top of capacity planning and employees take breaks without the hassle of emails, spreadsheets and clunky HR tools. Visit the website →
As the sole marketer and wearer of many hats, I worked closely with the founder and a tight-knit team of designers and engineers to conceptualise and build Pause from scratch: from conducting user interviews and beta tests to writing copy for the app, Slack integration, marketing website and all social collateral.
Challenge
Taking time off shouldn’t be a stressful, time-consuming and expensive process, but it is.
There's a wonderful shift happening in workplaces today: they're becoming less robotic and more empathetic in nature. More companies are loosening up their rigid leave policies to be more human-centric. At the same time, many of them are embracing the flexibility of remote and hybrid work, and are building culture accordingly.
But we found that the tools in our systems-first world hadn't come up to speed yet. At best, people were using HR suites that suffered from feature bloat, weren't delightful to look at, or were driven by predatory time "tracking" policies. At worst, they were applying for time off in a mess of back-and-forth emails, company-wide spreadsheets, or Slack messages sent in the hope that the right person would see it.
All of these approaches lacked empathetic features that went beyond time tracking, such as nudging teammates to take time off if they haven't in a while.
Our mission became: How might we enable small businesses and remote teams to plan better, practice active informing, and apply for time off in just a few minutes?
"When you have less than 10 people in your company, it's easy to know who's in, who's out and who's working on what. Grow beyond 10 members, though, and you'll find that previously obvious information is now a mass of confusion, delays and missed trains. At the very least, it isn't scalable. At worst, it breaks both your projects and your teams."
Approach
We wanted to reimagine a time-off management tool that fits seamlessly into daily workflows, is easy to use, and provides all the information you need (no more, no less). To do that, we had to:
Build
We harnessed insights from our beta testers and and streamed flows for an intuitive product experience without switching tools.
Brand
We shaped a solid and relatable narrative to maintain a cohesive brand experience across touchpoints including Slack and the web app.
Market
We took a product-led marketing approach and built a loyal base of customers to support organic marketing and outreach.
This is a WIP. More coming soon.
Outcome
300 organisations and $25,000 ARR within the first 12 months
Top 10 Finalist in two categories of the Product Hunt Golden Kitty Awards
Top 100 Finalist in G2’s list of Highest Satisfaction Products, 2022