SoulCycle
Senior Manager of Product Design / 2018-2019 / Rider-facing acquisition, Retention, and Engagement
I joined SoulCycle at a unique time when we began to innovate with technology beyond the transactional products that were only focused on getting riders into our studios.
As Senior Manager of Product Design, I led up to 5 designers and user research partners focused on acquisition, retention, and overall engagement.
My Role
SoulCycle brought me in to a team with two other product designers in early 2018.
During my time, I led or contributed in key growth moments:
Scaled the team from 2 to 10+ world-class designers and UX researchers
Implemented career skills levelsetting across the Product org, and authoring the Product Design individual contributor and management tracks
Introduced design system tooling and version control frameworks for multiple designers working on projects together
Developed design-thinking based process for projects and pressure-tested with the team
Embedded qualitative research into our discovery process (we were doing well with quantitative)
I managed designers working across mobile and web platforms, as well as our internal staff-facing tools. During complex projects, I typically helped early-stage strategy and scoping, wireframing, design project planning, research planning + execution, and design contribution on visual design for small pieces, when appropriate.
This page outlines some projects I either led and/or directly contributed design in.
SoulBeat - Launched in 2019
In 2018, an internal concept called “SoulStats” was floating around as a way to send metrics back to riders. After conducting many rounds of pressure-testing research, we concluded SoulCycle riders mostly did not care for metrics, at least in the same vein as some of our competitors who simply showed miles, calories, and RPM readouts. We needed to do something different.
SoulBeat was a cross-team hardware and software effort that pushed our class experience into a new dimension of progress and tracking for riders. As a result, riders shared more to social media, engaged with fellow instructors and riders, and tended to be more engaged with their specific classes as they pushed themselves to higher scores.
Much of the visual design came from several designers, one of whom wrote an in-depth overview of the work.
Soulcup - Launched in 2019
In 2019, we started to probe into social features: how could we start injecting community into our experience? Riders were already coming in small groups to classes, so after some research and idea testing, we found alignment with a lightweight concept in conjunction with one of our season ride challenges.
Riders are now able to
Create teams
Invite their friends
Earn prizes for group accomplishments
The framework for this challenge is reusable and a base for social-booking features and further community connection opportunities.
Ecomm on mobile - Launched in 2019
There is a direct correlation to rider retention and their retail purchases of SoulCycle gear. I led a project with 2 product designers to explore and implement Shop in our app, which became the primary source of purchases with a month after launch.
Workshops
Through all our projects, I led and coached designers through hosting discovery workshops, where everyone on the team could sketch and contribute to early ideation.
Please reach out for specific project walkthroughs and deep dives into the process additions we worked through at SoulCycle.