Scrintal
Building the most enjoyable way to shape ideas – The Playground for the Mind, and designing and evolving a product from 0 → 1.
2022 – Today
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Summary
Scrintal is an infinite canvas app that gives users the possibility to place a variety of blocks (text, headings, media, etc.) on a board to brainstorm, think freely, and write. The work cumulated and resulted in the Playground for the Mind, a single place to enjoy a seamless transition between thinking, writing, and sharing.
Over the course of 2022 to 2024 I led the whole design processes at Scrintal, taking the product from an early alpha to a public version. I led the user interview processes, worked on the overall product development and product discovery, as well as regularly taking part in product discussions, and closely collaborating with the CEO, CTO, Product Manager, and Engineers.
Intro
After working on well-established products at iTranslate, used by millions of people for 3 1/2 years, I joined Scrintal as their first designer taking the product from 0 → 1, leading and establishing design processes at an early stage startup, with the opportunity to build a product pretty much from the ground up. At the time I joined the team, the product was only available upon invite to its closed beta, there were over 35,000 people on the waitlist, however, Scrintal also faced a couple of problems as users had a hard time navigating through the different areas of the app, retrieve content they accidentally removed, or getting a hang of its functionalities in general.
The initial idea of Scrintal was to build a visual knowledge management tool, riding the hype-fueled wave of bi-directional linking, creating a second brain, and the power of knowledge bases back in 2022. It gave you the possibility to place your notes on an infinite canvas and connect them by creating links, which were then visualized directly on the canvas. Your notes lived on boards, of which you were able to create multiple ones, and use them to structure your work across different projects. Besides that, you were able to re-use your notes across all the boards you have created. Compared to traditional knowledge management software that displays your notes only in a linear way, Scrintal gave you an overview of your knowledge graph with the possibility to zoom into specific topics at any time.
The work cumulated and resulted in the Playground for the Mind, a single place to enjoy a seamless transition between thinking, writing, and sharing.
Vision
To take Scrintal from 0 → 1, from beta to launch, we first made sure to align on a vision that drives us and the development and the design of the app. We created a shared understanding to iterate quickly, discuss openly, test often and early, and constantly work on discoveries. As a tight-knit team, everyone was open to bring in their ideas, and form them into actionable pitches ready to explore and work on.
Target Group
Through user interviews, we learned that our main target audience consists of high achieving individuals, however the tool is aimed at anyone who wants to understand complex topics, bring their ideas together, and work on the things they care about.
I led the user interview process, which I separated into regular user check-ins to get raw inputs without me targeting a specific feature or test a specific idea, idea validating interviews during which I focused on presenting new ideas, and feature feedback interviews to gather inputs on recent updates we shipped. Through the user interviews, I continuously worked on product discovery to identify further areas of improvement as well as new feature explorations. The research material got summarized in reports and made available to the whole team to follow up on the process. More concrete ideas found their ways into pitches, as we used an adapted version of the Shape Up process to build and evolve Scrintal.
Versatility
Scrintal combines the freedom of an infinite canvas with the power of dynamically reusable documents. Besides that, thanks to a variety of blocks and visual elements to brainstorm, Scrintal builds the bridge between the creative processes of thinking, writing, and creating. Scrintal's canvas and the single library containing everything you create lets you shape your ideas and transform them into lasting and new insights.
I designed a rich canvas toolbar that gives users access to the most important tools to create and interact with the canvas. Besides that, I created a dedicated menu to access the variety of blocks users could place directly on the canvas. No matter what kind of block a user placed on the canvas, interacting with it should have been fun and playful. Therefore, I designed a contextual action bar that appeared above the selected block and displays actions dedicated to the specific block type.
Although every single block you added to the canvas exists as its own entity, Scrintal gave you the possibility to attach blocks to each other to further structure your thinking. In case you wanted that container of blocks to become a part of your library, you could leverage the action bar and turn it into a document with a single click.
Craft
Whenever I am working on a digital product, I pour my whole craft and dedication into it. I always aim for creating a top-notch user experience. While building and designing beautiful software is my passion, working at an early-stage startup operating in a fast-paced area, I often got faced with the reality that we simply did not have the time to craft every single detail. We were focused on solving our users' problems, iterate quickly, and test early. The perfection could always come at a later stage.
Nevertheless, I made sure to deliver and build up on a certain quality and translate it to all the components and elements I built across the whole app.
Conclusion
Throughout the two years of building and designing Scrintal from the ground up, I had to wear many different hats. I guess this is what makes working at a startup special, you bring in your own expertise, but you quickly learn to expand, leave your comfort zone, and acquire new skills. There are a lot of opportunities to grow, and I am thankful to have received the trust of leading the whole design processes, taking part in the product development and discovery, leading user interviews, constantly identifying flaws in our product and how to improve them, as well as mentoring interns.
While product design is my craft and passion, I learned at Scrintal that this is not the only way I can contribute to an early-stage environment. I deeply engaged in product discussions to figure out the next steps for our product, get a deeper understanding of user needs, heavily collaborated with engineers, and took my strategic and conceptual thinking to the next level. Throughout all those practices, I closely collaborated with the CEO, CTO, as well as our Product Manager and Engineers.