Yoga & Socks · Marketplace MVP
From a rough idea to a tested MVP direction.
As product design lead and startup sparring partner, I took the concept from first assumptions to a tested high-fidelity prototype helping the team learn what mattered before committing to development.
The brief
Validate the opportunity.
Yoga & Socks set out to create a digital home for yoga as a holistic practice instead of becoming another fitness app. The idea was to connect practitioners with classes, teachers, studios and retreats while giving independent instructors a better way to reach their audience and market their services.
The concept was ambitious and the team was still early. My job was to turn assumptions into evidence, define a realistic first product and make the experience tangible enough to test.
The pragmatic goal: learn where the product created value before spending money building it.
What the process delivered
A smaller bet, backed by better evidence.
balanced across practitioners looking for the right offer and instructors trying to grow.
focused on the connected discovery-to-booking journey instead of an oversized feature list.
with real users before implementation, revealing friction while it was still inexpensive to fix.
The product tension
One marketplace had to work for both sides.
A useful product could not optimise for practitioners alone. Every discovery and booking experience depended on instructors being able to publish relevant offers and reach the right people.
Find yoga that genuinely fits.
Compare fragmented offers, filter by personal needs and move confidently from discovery to booking.
Reach the right community.
Publish classes, workshops and retreats without being drowned out by larger fitness platforms.
Research before features
Replace the imagined user with a clearer picture.
User interviews and competitor analysis grounded the concept in real behaviour. Personas made the two sides of the marketplace visible, while benchmarking and card sorting exposed gaps in existing products and gave the information architecture a stronger foundation.
Interview practitioners and instructors to understand motivations, habits and practical barriers.
Benchmark adjacent platforms to separate table-stakes features from meaningful differentiation.
Use card sorting and flow mapping to organise a broad offer around how people naturally search.
From insight to scope
Design the journey before polishing the screens.
The product had many plausible directions: community, content, discovery, messaging, profiles, payments and provider tools. Information architecture and user flows helped turn that possibility space into an MVP people could actually navigate.
The core path became clear: explore relevant offers, understand the details, book with confidence and stay connected.
Iterate in increasing fidelity
Sketch it. Test the logic. Then earn the polish.
I moved from paper sketches to wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes, keeping each step cheap enough to change. The result was not one big design reveal, but a series of increasingly informed decisions.
Test before build
The prototype did its most valuable job: it found the weak spots.
A heuristic review and moderated usability testing evaluated task completion, efficiency and satisfaction. Core journeys such as discovery, booking and contacting an instructor were understandable. More specific search behaviour and profile settings still needed work. Valuable learnings the team needed before development.
The core value proposition and connected discovery-to-booking journey.
Specific search paths and the findability of profile settings.
Secondary ideas that did not need to inflate the first implementation.
The product language
Calm, credible and made for more than fitness.
The visual system needed to feel welcoming without falling into wellness clichés. Soft colour, editorial typography and human imagery supported the brand idea while reusable interface patterns kept the product coherent.
Brand and product evolved together, so the final prototype felt like one believable experience rather than a UI placed inside a separate identity.
The result
A risk-reduced MVP direction.
The team left with a clearly prioritised product, a tested high-fidelity prototype and concrete evidence for what to improve before implementation. The biggest win was not adding more features, but knowing which experience was worth building first.
Validate your product direction