Executive Summary
As the founding product designer at 34Gigs, I shaped an AI-enabled coaching platform from a manually validated process into a real product.
The core problem: coaching sessions were isolated and fragmented, with no continuity between them. Insights got lost, context reset every session, and neither coaches nor clients could dig past surface-level symptoms to root causes.
I partnered with the two founders over eight months to research the space, define the MVP strategy, and design both a web platform for coaches and a mobile app for clients.
The centerpiece of the product is a drillable mind map that organizes a client's thoughts, quotes, and patterns into layered categories, built from session transcripts and client-contributed data like journaling and voice notes.
The platform is currently in a live trial with 40 clients across 4 coaches, 80% of whom are actively engaging with their mind maps. Coaches report meaningfully more productive sessions, and the founders secured initial investment to continue validation.
Project Overview
The two founders behind 34Gigs had already proven the concept manually. They were running coaching sessions, using AI tools by hand to stitch together insights, and getting strong results. But they had no product, no scalable system, and no way to bring on more coaches or clients without it all falling apart. They brought me on as the founding product designer to turn what they'd validated into something real.
I started by going deep into their existing process: understanding every step of how they ran sessions, how they used AI manually, what they tracked, and why. From there, I conducted one-hour research interviews with six of their active coachees to understand motivations, pain points with traditional coaching, and what specifically about the 34Gigs approach was working for them. I also ran a survey and analyzed a significant amount of internal documentation about the business model and vision. One of the clearest findings was that clients were surprisingly willing to contribute personal data between sessions (journaling, voice dictation) if it meant the AI could help surface deeper patterns. That willingness became a design pillar.
The MVP needed to validate multiple assumptions at once, so we split the work into two tracks: a coach-facing web platform and a client-facing mobile app. The web platform handles client management, auto-transcription of sessions, and collection of external data. The core of both experiences is a drillable mind map: an AI-generated structure that organizes a client's thoughts and themes into layered categories, where any node can be traced back to the exact source quote from a session or journal entry. Coaches use it to prepare for sessions and track patterns over time. Clients use the mobile version to explore their own map, add to it between sessions, and stay connected to the work.
I took both through multiple rounds of usability testing and stakeholder feedback before handoff to the development team. The platform is now live in a trial with 40 clients and 4 coaches. 80% of clients are actively using their mind maps, coaches report stronger session continuity, and demand exceeded capacity to the point where the founders had to be selective about who they onboarded. They've secured investment to keep going, and validation is ongoing.