YuMuuv

Summary

At YuMuuv, I served as Founding Product Designer and Design Systems Architect, taking a wellness SaaS from MVP to a globally scaled product with €1.04M ARR, 208K+ users across 100+ countries, and market recognition as a top G2 in 14 categories. I led the 0-to-1 product design, built a scalable design system, and drove a strategic post-COVID pivot that increased retention and engagement and enabled faster, higher-quality delivery.

Role: Founding Product Designer & Design Systems Architect
Scope: End-to-end product design, design systems, brand, sales enablement, and investor materials
Highlights: 0-to-1 MVP, design system, COVID-era pivot, measurable engagement and sales uplift, G2 market leadership

Context & Challenge

YuMuuv set out to build a wellness SaaS that helps organizations run activity challenges and improve employee health. The initial challenge was to launch a credible MVP quickly, while still laying foundations for a scalable, high-quality product.

In 2020, COVID fundamentally changed how companies approached wellness and remote work. The product needed to pivot from a simple activity tracker into a more engaging, gamified experience that could sustain motivation and support remote teams at scale.

My Role & Responsibilities

As the founding designer, I:

• Led the 0-to-1 product design from idea to launched MVP, including UX, UI, and brand.
  

• Architected and maintained the design system and documentation.
  

• Designed core product experiences: challenge creation, participant experience, multi-criteria challenge logic, and analytics.
  

• Partnered closely with the founding team on product strategy, pricing, and positioning.
  

• Created sales and investor materials, contributing directly to commercial performance and fundraising.
  

Since January 2024, I have continued in an advisory role (<5 hours/month), supporting strategic decisions while the operational team runs day-to-day design.

Approach

1. Building an MVP that could scale

• Designed and shipped an MVP in three months by building a 400+ screen design system upfront, ensuring consistency and enabling rapid iteration.
  

• Established UX patterns and a coherent visual language that could support new features without heavy redesign.
  

2. Creating a differentiated wellness experience

• Designed the proprietary Activity Index, a scientific wellness metric synthesizing WHO research, biometric data, and peer-reviewed science, to position YuMuuv as more than a simple step counter.
  

• Developed a complex multi-criteria challenge system that became a key competitive differentiator, allowing organizations to tailor challenges to their goals and culture.
  

3. Post-COVID pivot to engagement and gamification

• Led a strategic product pivot in 2020 to focus on gamification, engagement, and social features.
  

• Redesigned the UI to be more playful and motivating, and introduced peer chat and AI-powered progress highlights to keep users engaged over time.
  

4. Scaling delivery through design systems and workflows

• Architected a Figma design system with 120+ components, atom-based structure, and documentation.
  

• Improved design-to-dev efficiency: Web tasks became 20% faster (5 days → 4 days), product design cycles became 23% faster (4 weeks → 3.2 weeks).
  

• Enabled 4+ feature releases per year without degrading quality, by standardizing patterns and handoff.
  

5. Enabling sales and fundraising

• Designed a dedicated sales enablement app prototype, streamlining how sales teams demonstrate the product; this contributed to an 82% increase in sales in the first month after launch.
  

• Crafted investor pitch decks and supporting visuals, contributing to a €550K seed fundraising round.
  

Impact

Business growth: Helped grow YuMuuv to €1.04M ARR, 208K+ users, in 100+ countries.

Engagement & retention: The gamification-focused redesign and new features delivered a +14% increase in monthly retention and +6% increase in engagement.

Delivery velocity: The design system and workflows reduced design and implementation time by 20–23%, supporting 4+ quality feature releases per year.

Sales & funding: The sales app prototype drove an 82% sales increase in the first month, and the product story and visuals supported a €550K seed round.

Market recognition: YuMuuv achieved G2 Leadership (Fall 2025), ranking at the top across 14 categories (Results Index, Usability Index, Implementation Index, all regions, all company sizes).