Building The Strategy

When the Metricbooks team showed up with a rough wireframe and a 14-day deadline, we had to get creative about how to make this work. The usual approach of starting from scratch wasn't going to cut it.

Turns out, they'd already done some solid homework. Their market research was thorough, and they knew their competitors inside and out.

This was actually perfect for us. Instead of spending the first week figuring out who their users were, we could jump straight into building something those users would love.

The big decision was using Ant Design as our foundation. Some teams might see this as taking shortcuts, but we saw it as being smart about time.

This choice bought us 3-4 extra days to focus on the stuff that really mattered.

Presenting Design Iterations

Here's something we've learned over the years. Most projects get stuck because everyone's trying to perfect the design before they even know what direction they're going.

So on Day 3, we did something different.

We presented three visual directions for their main module. Not ten options, not endless variations. Three solid directions that each with a different layout & design direction.

The team could see exactly where each path would lead.

They picked their favorite, and that was it. No endless revisions - we moved fast. Just a clear decision that let us move forward with confidence. Sometimes the best way to move fast is to make fewer decisions, not more.

Making Beautiful Notification & Popups

Transaction approvals are tricky. Users need to know their action worked, but constant pop-ups make the whole experience feel janky. It's one of those problems that seems small until you're actually using the product every day.

The solution ended up being simpler than we expected. Auto-disappearing notifications that stick around just long enough to be useful, then get out of the way.

The trick was finding that sweet spot where users felt confident about their actions without getting annoyed by lingering messages.

We added an undo option too, because nothing kills confidence like worrying you might mess something up.

Users could move quickly through approvals knowing they had a safety net if needed.

Creating a Demo That Gets People Excited

Most product demos are pretty boring. Screenshots, bullet points, maybe a video if you're lucky. Metricbooks needed something that would make investors sit up and pay attention.

The interactive playground we built let people actually play with the product. Not just watch someone else use it, but click around and see how it responded.

The animations and personal touches weren't just for show. They created little delight moments that add up to a feeling that the product is polished and ready for real users.

Powerful AI Insights

The platform was creating tons of data, but users were getting overwhelmed trying to figure out what to do with it all.

The Smart Insights panel focuses on relevance over completeness. Instead of showing every possible metric, it surfaces the insights that actually matter for making decisions right now. The most urgent stuff appears first, with clear next steps attached.

This approach makes the AI feel like a helpful assistant rather than an information fire hose.

Users can quickly scan their dashboard, understand what's happening with their business, and know exactly what needs their attention.

Designing Metric's Unique Value Proposition

The Reconciler Reviewer was doing too much at once. Users were trying to input data and review AI results on the same screen, which created this weird cognitive juggling act that nobody enjoyed.

The fix was separating input from output. Clean sections that let users focus on one thing at a time. Smart highlights that draw attention to what actually needs review. And a one-click "Approve All" option for the obvious stuff that doesn't need human oversight.

Using AI confidence scores to pre-approve clear-cut transactions was a game changer. Users could spend their mental energy on edge cases that actually needed human judgment, instead of rubber-stamping obvious approvals all day.

Final Hand-Off

Good design is only half the battle. If developers can't implement it properly, all that work goes to waste. So every screen came with detailed notes about how things should actually work.

The documentation covered interaction details, timing for animations, and specifications that matched our component choices.

Developers could build exactly what we designed without having to guess about intended behavior or hunt us down for clarification.

Edge cases got the same treatment. Zero states, error messages, loading screens. Every scenario was designed and documented before it became a problem during development.

Conclusion

Fourteen days later, Metricbooks had a complete MVP that looked and felt like a mature product. The interactive demo was creating memorable investor presentations.

Early users were giving positive feedback about the experience. The development team had everything they needed to build it properly.

The notification system worked without getting in anyone's way. The Smart Insights panel helped users make quick decisions.

The Reconciler Reviewer eliminated the cognitive overload that makes similar tools frustrating to use.

Most importantly, Metricbooks felt confident about what they were launching. They weren't making excuses about it being "just an MVP" or asking people to imagine how it would work eventually. They had something polished that represented their vision properly.