- Internal tools
- 0→1
- Dev collaboration
The internal tool that gave mockup-making back to the whole company
Built with one full-stack developer; design's request queue dropped to near zero.
At a glance
Role
Designer and product owner
Collaborators
- One full-stack developer
Timeline
Side-of-desk build
Impact
- Design's mockup request queue dropped to near zero
Context
Leadership and the marketing team relied on designers to produce customized mockups showing specific SMS interactions for marketing material. Every campaign, deck, and one-pager meant another one-off request.
Those requests landed on designers who already carried a full product design workload, so marketing waited on design bandwidth and design lost hours to work that was not product work.
The SMS mockup generator was a joint effort between myself and one engineer to create an internal tool that empowered non-designers to create their own mockups that served their needs, without waiting on a designer.
Constraints
- Since this was an internal initiative, we had limited resources and external facing designs always took priority.
Key decision 01
Minimal interface
With limited resources, a short timeline, and non-designers as the primary users, the interface had to stay minimal with only the fields needed to produce a believable mockup, nothing more.
That meant deciding which parts of the phone screen actually needed to be customizable to make a mockup look authentic such as sender name, time, profile image, and text bubble color.
Key decision 02
User feedback and additional features
After a preliminary UAT with internal stakeholders, we fine tuned the fields we already had and cut anything that caused hesitation.
We also added the features they told us they needed like link previews, and additional timestamps to show the passage of time across a conversation or an outreach sequence.
Outcome
- Design mockup request queue
- Near zeroDesign mockup request queue
By locking the brand frame and exposing only the fields that change, the tool let non-designers produce believable mockups without waiting on design bandwidth.