AI Startup:

Context Scout

A search-forward assistant

in the browser

Leading Product &

Strategy from a

Design Perspective

As VP of Product for Context Scout I'm responsible for the following:

Product Strategy
User Research
Product Design (UX & UI)
Website & Marketing for the company

I lead from a user-centered perspective, deciding on features and a roadmap that combines product-market fit and user needs. This is based on extensive user research and a gated-MVP approach to creating AI applications.

Read my thoughts on creating AI products here, in: "Designing Contextual AI in the Browser & Beyond"

User Research

At the start of my working with Context Scout, I met with users and worked through existing pain-points in the product as well as general workflows to gain a sense of what workarounds they were using, and what they needed from tools. Types of user groups were formed, and an analysis was run to determine what features should be focused on.

Contact Panel

Social Panel

Work software that's fun

At Context Scout, we know B2B software needs to be compelling to make users demand it of purchasers, and we're doing that in small subtle ways through the design.

Take our loading animation. Our logo looks like an oragami squirrel, and now as you search it folds & unfolds while the tech. processes more of the page and related websites.

Our navigation wheel encircles the subject of a task. This mirrors our knowledge graph, the core functionality of our AI & ML software. This circle on the right is our click-target, floating over the page as an easy-access button to our Chrome extension.

To add a playful nature to such deep tech, as content loads while Context Scout searches the web, the categories that they relate to pop forward to notify the user of the new information.

Discoverability improved with the new click-target design. As users visited websites, the circle appeared when Context Scout had found helpful information about a topic.

Designing for discoverability and for a unique look for the product has resulted in an easily identifiable product, that serves a functional purpose to encourage use.

Card Framework: Scale to support domains & third party integrations

Constant frame UI remains present while cards interchange in the panel to support which topic is in focus around the wheel. This WIP table shows potential card-types with sources of information noted