SaaS product case study · 0 to 1 · 2022–2025

Ottokit

People were signing up to SureTriggers and leaving without building a single workflow. They did not understand what the product could do until they had already given up on it. I designed Ottokit, and the SureTriggers product it grew from, to fix that: a no-code automation platform where users connect 1000+ apps through a visual canvas, and where the first five minutes of the product actually show them why it matters.

My role: Sole product designer: interaction model, flows, states, specs, implementation QA, and full design system built from scratch
Scope: 0→1 product design across four major phases, 2022–2025
Team: PM, PO, and 5–10 engineers
Tools: Figma, React, Design systems, AI workflows

Outcome

First-workflow creation rate improved significantly after the onboarding redesign. The canvas architecture held across three years without a rebuild.

Overview

Making Automation Valuable in the First Five Minutes

The Problem

When SureTriggers launched, automation tools like Zapier, Make, and Pabbly Connect already had the market. Competing meant being meaningfully easier, not just cheaper. The real gap was not features. Users could not get to value fast enough: they signed up, hit a blank canvas, and left before building anything. Users switching from other platforms brought another problem: the integrations they relied on elsewhere were not in SureTriggers yet. We studied what worked in those products, mapped the gaps, and built our own version of those patterns, making Ottokit feel familiar to switchers without copying how competitors did it.

My Responsibility

As the only designer, I owned the product end to end: interaction architecture, flows, states, edge cases, specifications, and implementation QA. I built the entire design system from scratch in Figma: every component and every pattern, starting from zero. When we rebranded to Ottokit in 2025 and completed a full UX overhaul, I brought on a junior designer, mentored him through the product logic, set direction, and kept the new work coherent with the interaction model already in place.

How I Worked

I pressure-tested direction weekly with the PM and PO, brought multiple options into reviews, and resolved ambiguity before it became expensive engineering assumptions. Mid-product, I pushed for moving our component foundation from Tailwind to shadcn because engineers were rebuilding every Figma component from scratch. A shared foundation made both sides faster, the Figma library cleaner, and the product more consistent across every new surface.

Constraints That Shaped the Work

01Win against entrenched competitors on ease of use, not price.
02Help first-time users reach a working automation within their first session.
03Make switchers feel familiar without copying competing products.
04Create an interaction model that could absorb templates, branching logic, and AI.

Key Decisions

Four Decisions That Shaped the Product

Decision 1

Canvas-First, but Constrained by Default

Context: A linear step-by-step builder was easier to learn and cheaper to build. A visual canvas was more powerful long-term but meant asking engineering to take on real upfront complexity for a payoff that wouldn't show up for years.
My decision: I chose a simplified canvas with clear node anchors and a constrained layout grid with no freeform dragging: structure by default, flexibility when needed. I also prioritized making the canvas fast and smooth because users coming from Zapier or Make already had expectations about how a canvas should feel.
Tradeoff: The canvas created more implementation complexity and made first-run guidance more important than it would have been in a linear builder.
Result: That upfront investment became the foundation engineering never had to renegotiate: the same architecture absorbed templates, multi-branch workflows, conditional logic, and AI across three years without a rebuild. Switchers adapted faster because the interaction felt considered, not clunky.

Annotated comparison of the older SureTriggers canvas and the redesigned Ottokit workflow canvas. — Canvas evolution from SureTriggers to Ottokit, showing how the builder moved from an early linear model into a cleaner, branching workflow system.

Decision 2

Template-First Onboarding Instead of More Tooltips

Context: The PM, PO, and I tracked daily how many users built a workflow during their first signup session. The number was not good. Users hit seven setup steps before seeing the canvas or understanding what they were building toward.
My decision: I redesigned onboarding around templates. The first action became template selection, not a configuration screen, and I reduced pre-canvas steps from seven to three. The goal was a working automation within the first five minutes.
Tradeoff: The redesign required a template system and a new guided flow instead of a smaller patch to the existing onboarding.
Result: Bringing daily activation data to the PM and PO turned this from a design opinion into a resourcing decision: engineering committed to building a template system instead of patching the existing flow. First-workflow creation on signup climbed as a result; specific figures are withheld under NDA.

Template-first onboarding flow showing recipe selection, guided setup, and app selection. — Template-first onboarding turned the first action into a concrete automation outcome instead of another configuration step.

Decision 3

Configure Nodes Without Leaving the Canvas

Context: Full-screen node configuration made users lose track of their workflow. They kept reopening surrounding steps to understand what fields mapped where.
My decision: I introduced a right sidebar that keeps the canvas visible while users configure the selected node: the same screen, with no context switching.
Tradeoff: The narrower surface required careful hierarchy and progressive disclosure for complex conditions and field mapping.
Result: The sidebar became Ottokit's core configuration surface. Because I designed it as an extensible surface instead of a single-purpose panel, it was ready to become the home for AI assistance a year later without engineering needing to design a second pattern from scratch.

Ottokit canvas with a right sidebar used to configure a Google Sheets workflow step. — The right sidebar keeps configuration, guidance, and the workflow structure in one continuous workspace.

Decision 4

AI Inside the Canvas, Not Beside It

Context: The obvious default, especially with AI still new to most SaaS products, was a standalone chatbot bolted onto the side of the product. I didn't think that was right for Ottokit: it would have meant users learning a second tool just to get value from the first.
My decision: AI lives inside the existing sidebar. It generates workflow nodes directly on the canvas, users refine them through the same configuration surface they already know, and contextual guidance appears when automations hit errors.
Tradeoff: The sidebar had to support conversation, generation, error guidance, and configuration without becoming another complex product.
Result: AI shipped as a native product capability instead of a bolt-on feature, because the case for embedding it in a surface we already trusted won out over building a second one. Users who tried AI-generated workflows converted to paid plans at a higher rate than those who built manually.

Ottokit AI Workflow Assistant shown inside the workflow builder with contextual debugging and action suggestions. — AI was placed inside the workflow context so users could create, debug, and add actions without learning a separate surface.

Product Evolution

The Product Kept Changing. The Interaction Model Did Not.

Across four major phases, the product expanded from a new automation builder into Ottokit with native AI while the core architecture continued to hold.

2022 · SureTriggers V1

Built 0→1 as the sole designer: canvas, trigger/action model, node configuration, dashboard, and full Figma design system, all from scratch. Shipped to paying customers.

2023 · Activation

Tracked signup-to-first-workflow daily. Rebuilt onboarding around templates, reduced pre-canvas setup from seven steps to three, and drove a clear jump in first-workflow creation.

2024 · Canvas Overhaul

Moved the component foundation from Tailwind to shadcn with engineering, rebuilt the Figma library, improved canvas speed and smoothness, and added the right-sidebar configuration pattern.

2025 · Ottokit Rebrand

Used the name change as the forcing function for a full UX overhaul. Brought on and mentored a junior designer, set direction, refined the canvas and dashboard, and integrated AI as a native capability.

Ottokit workflow canvas showing test run, step-level validation, warnings, and branch-aware debugging. — Testing and debugging moved onto the canvas so validation states stayed close to the workflow instead of living in a separate reporting surface.

Impact

What Changed

0→1built as sole designer, from first canvas to paying customers
7→3onboarding steps before a user reaches their first automation
5–10 engineerscoordinated with as the sole designer across four product phases
3 yearssame canvas architecture across two product identities and four phases
AI-builtworkflows converted to paid plans at a meaningfully higher rate than manually-built ones (internal tracking, NDA)

Growth metrics are reported as verified directional trends, not absolute figures. The underlying product data is under NDA.

Reflection

What I Would Do Differently

01Test onboarding with real users before launch. Two usability sessions could have exposed the seven-step activation problem before six months of product data and engineering rework.
02Mentoring the junior designer showed me how much of the interaction model lived only in my head. Onboarding someone else into the product forced me to document decisions I had been making intuitively, and that made the product better.
03The shadcn call taught me that design decisions and engineering decisions are not separate conversations. Pushing for a shared component foundation saved both sides time and made the product more consistent than it would have been if I had stayed in my lane.