Uptime App
The bite-sized learning app. Head of Product Design, seven years. Built it (hands-on) 0 to 1, took it from a B2C app to a B2B platform, led a team of 8. Hands-on the whole way: senior IC craft, team leadership, and a founder's remit across product, proposition and growth.
By the numbers
TL;DR
I joined when Uptime was an idea about cutting the best moments out of internet videos and stitching them into expert-led playlists. Seven years later it was a platform with 2,000+ enterprise customers. The visual Hack format Jean Cambruzzi and I created is what made that possible.
Three remits at once: Head of Product Design, product lead for Proposition, oversight of Growth.
In action
What Uptime is, in 30 seconds
Uptime, the app film
Key successes
Seven years, six results
- 3xInvented the visual Hack format with Jean CambruzziRoughly 3x more engaging
- ~4xBuilt Spark and Spark Repetition into a retention engine1.6x Day 1, close to 4x Day 7
- 28Won the argument for a bold redesign with evidencePeople tested, old design against new. Apple, Google and Fast Company recognition followed
- 100+Drove monetisation strategy with Christian Vasile and Léa SamraniTests across paywalls, onboarding and first-Hack journeys
- AIDesigned Hackbot and the enterprise layerOptum, State Street, 2,000+ enterprise customers
- 2→7Grew the product design teamLed 8 across product
Jump to
Seven years in one page. Jump to the part that matters to you.
Product-market fit: the shift that changed the product
Business problem
We pivoted into a crowded market late, with nothing that made anyone choose us over Blinkist or Headway.
User problem
Text and audio summaries assume you’ll concentrate. Real people skim, drift and forget.
The context
Video didn’t scale
Video was expensive to scale and we stopped it during COVID. We pivoted to books, courses and documentaries.
The format
A story, not a summary
I turned a Hack into something closer to an Instagram story with meaning, carried by audio, visuals and text together. Jean and I shaped the format. I drew it and built the visual execution.
It was designed with your phone in mind, but built to work horizontally too, for the web launch and the Apple TV, CarPlay, Android Auto and Alexa versions we were planning. We later launched it on Apple Watch, so you could listen to Hacks without your phone.
- 01Intro
- 02Three insights
- 03In action
- 04Conclusion
Anatomy of a Hack
A Hack, start to finish
The evidence
We didn’t bet on taste
All three formats shipped. We validated the story format cheaply, freelance illustrators on top-tier Hacks only. So we changed the default and removed nothing.
The signal
“Hack opened”
People stuck the moment they opened their first Hack. “Hack opened” became our north-star metric.
You can optimise a funnel all day. It won’t hold anyone if the thing at the end doesn’t land. This one did.
Visual design: fixing what people felt before what they did
Business problem
In a category where every product looks the same, looking the same is a decision, and it was costing us awareness.
User problem
People couldn’t tell what Uptime was for by looking at it.
The principle
Hide with shapes, reveal effortless knowledge
The initial UI tested as generic, so I set a principle the team could build against. Bold on purpose, challenger-brand thinking, the Monzo and Airbnb playbook of getting loud first.
The evidence
Not everyone agreed
Including at the top. So I built evidence: 28 people, UK and US, 14 on the old design and 14 on the new, unmoderated, same questions.
- OLDGeneric. Busy.What 14 people said about the old design
- NEWFun. Curious. Energetic. Friendly.What 14 people said about the new one
Drag to compare
The build
Shipped with the lights on
Exactly the personality we were aiming for. Then it had to ship without switching the product off.
- 01Proof of conceptSo the direction was tangible
- 02Phased rolloutShipped in stages with the lights kept on
- 03Micro-interactionsWhat makes an app feel considered rather than functional
What followed
Millions of downloads
The awards matter for one reason: you can’t sell a learning product to a company by promising employees will enjoy it. You have to have proven they already do.
Retention: Spark, found through a failure
Business problem
Retention was flat, and the pressure was to copy the industry’s answer rather than find ours.
User problem
Nothing on Uptime belonged to the user, so there was nothing to come back to.
The pressure
A snack vs a meal
Founders and investors wanted daily usage. Duolingo had made streaks the industry’s answer. I raised a concern: a language lesson is a snack, a book summary is a meal, and people don’t eat meals on a streak schedule.
A concern isn’t data, so we built streaks properly and gave them a real shot. Nothing moved.
The insight
Weekly was the real rhythm
Buried in that failure was the insight. Our users came back weekly, and that was the natural cadence of real learning, not a motivation problem.
What we built
Spark, a knowledge chest
When someone reacts to content they believe in, they start building their own space. Spark let people save the insights they believed in. I led Proposition wearing the PM hat and the design hat, designed the first versions, and the team took them forward.
Retention against the old baseline:
Spark, retention vs baseline
Then
Spark Repetition
Spaced repetition built on top, grounded in the same learning science as the format, brought engaged users back on that weekly rhythm.
A failed test that teaches you your product’s real rhythm is worth more than a successful one that flatters the roadmap.
Monetisation: testing the defaults
Business problem
Grow revenue per user without damaging the thing that made people stay.
User problem
People were signing up without really deciding to pay, and we didn’t know it yet.
The team
Treated like any design problem
Christian Vasile, Senior Product Designer, Léa Samrani, Lead Product Manager, and I instrumented the chain from trial started to renewal, set guardrails, and tested everything: paywalls, onboarding journeys, the paths to a first Hack, plan structures and pricing.
The finding
We killed the free trial
Every subscription app runs a free trial, so we tested whether that default held for us. It didn’t. It was manufacturing weak commitments.
- 01Converted worse than asking for payment upfront
- 02The payers it produced cancelled more in their first week
- 03Revenue per signed-up user fell by roughly a quarter
What the free trial did
The guardrail
When the money dashboard lies
A later variant won over 3x more card commitments, a clear success on the money dashboard. The guardrails showed it quietly stealing users from opening their first Hack.
Money metrics on one side, first-Hack metrics on the other. Monetisation was never allowed to win by cannibalising the product.
B2C to B2B: from a loved app to a product businesses buy
Business problem
Consumer subscriptions alone wouldn’t get us to the numbers, and building a separate enterprise product would have sunk us.
User problem
Employees ignore corporate learning because the content is dull and the tools are a chore.
The call
One platform, not two products
We had an app people liked using, awards and all. The question was whether that could become something a business pays for across thousands of employees.
So we stopped treating B2C and B2B as two products. One platform, with B2B as a way of distributing it. No bespoke builds per client.
What I built
The enterprise layer
Single sign-on and a secure company network, in 24 languages. On top of that:
- 1A branded spaceEach company gets its own front door, content split by team
- 2Their content, our formatOnboarding, wellbeing or compliance material turned into the same five-minute Hack
- 3Assigned training and reportingAn L&D lead can see what is landing
The pitch
Not another tool
The consumer awards made the argument before we said a word. Uptime went into Optum and State Street, used for compliance, wellbeing and internal comms.
Replace the stack of things your employees avoid with the one thing they already open.
AI: Hackbot, keeping the human in charge
Business problem
Enterprise only scales if customers can get their own content in without us building it for them.
User problem
An L&D lead has piles of legacy material and neither the time nor the design skill to turn it into something people will open.
How it works
My job was the flow, not the magic
Drop in a document, a URL, a video or some audio, and the system drafts a Hack in the Uptime format.
- 01Drop something inA document, a URL, a video or audio
- 02Pick a route“Create it for me”, or a guided Q&A by voice or text
- 03Review the draftAlways a draft, never auto-published
- 04Publish and translatePublishing controls, auto-translation into 24 languages
The principle
Lower the floor, don’t lower the ceiling
Simple by default, with an Advanced Mode to tune tone of voice, emphasis and source images.
Hackbot is where legacy business content becomes something people want to learn from. It’s the moment a business becomes a customer.
Results: where it landed
Millions of learners. Tens of millions invested. Two thousand plus enterprise customers.
Also
What’s not on this page
Seven years is a lot for one page. Left out: the user acquisition and growth experiments, the research framework I set up so the team could run their own studies, and the constant optimisation that keeps a product alive after launch.
More recently, how I use AI in my own process. With a solid design.md as the source of truth it gets me a long way: references and rough first passes, then I take those to finished myself. Same principle as Hackbot.
What people say
From the people I worked with
Humberto is, by far, the best design manager I have gotten the chance to work for. This is not even a close contest.
Christian Vasile · Growth Design at Cleo, host of Design Meets Business
“From a developer’s perspective, an absolute pleasure. Deep knowledge of design patterns and conventions I had never come across before, and I learned a lot from him.”
Lydia Golland · Lead Mobile Engineer, worked alongside me for 7 years
“One of those rare people who makes everyone around him better, whichever team they sit on. He held user needs and business goals in balance and never lost sight of either.”
Ben Tan Yin Qin · Marketing Lead, Econsultancy/Uptime
“As a manager he’s got something truly special, this unique way of getting the best out of people and making everyone on the team feel appreciated and cared for.”
Cristian Moisei · Senior Product Designer