Company:
HeroSpark is a SaaS startup that offers users a complete platform—including tools such as funnel creation, member management, automations, checkout, and a content consumption area—enabling them to launch their own digital infoproducts.
Problem:
Especially after the pandemic, the world became more connected, and we saw a growing demand for solutions that reduce the barriers of physical space and simplify day-to-day activities.
In this context, the “Live Meeting” product was launched to reinforce HeroSpark’s positioning as a platform that offers “everything in one place,” serving both our more experienced creators and attracting new ones.
Main goals:
Increase customer activation by offering a product format that is quicker to test and sell, as it doesn’t require extensive planning. A live course format allows creators to skip recording and editing lessons, for example.
Retain and support existing customers who rely on this format to deliver “high-ticket” products such as mentorships and live classes.
My role:
I led the initiative end-to-end, from discovery to delivery.
I collaborated with the engineering, business, sales, and customer experience teams to design the best experience for our end users.
🔍 Process:
How might we…
“How might we make it easier to create and sell digital infoproducts with live content, while maintaining the financial viability of this feature?”
👟 Steps:
CSD e Survey:
The first step after the initiative's kickoff was to gather the doubts and assumptions shared by stakeholders in a CSD matrix (certainties, assumptions and doubts), and use them to formulate hypotheses to be tested through a quantitative survey sent to our customer base.
The goal of this survey was to bring clarity on:
How well our customers understood the feature and how useful this new product format would be.
The size of the market: Whether they were already using other tools for live deliveries, and what pain points or needs they had with those tools.
The typical use case for the tool: For example, what features they expected it to include.
Benchmark
In parallel with the survey, I also conducted a benchmark with our main direct and indirect competitors to understand how far and in what ways they were addressing these issues. I also held conversations with the CX and sales teams to gather insights on the most common requests coming from customers.
Business Definitions
When it came time to define the solution, I synthesized all the insights gathered up to that point and led a stakeholder workshop using the “Is, Is Not, Does, Does Not” framework. This helped us align expectations on how to build the new product. There were two possible directions for the tool:
1 — Create only the scheduling functionality, allowing the delivery to happen through external tools like Zoom or Google Meet.
2 — Unify the experience by integrating a Zoom or Google Meet–like tool directly within our own members area.
We determined that the second option was the most valuable for HeroSpark, as it aligned better with customer expectations and our “everything in one place” brand positioning. Additionally, it offered a format not currently supported by the market, allowing us to justify the additional cost of the tool.
Prototype and Usability Testing
After getting stakeholder approval on the flow, I designed high-fidelity prototypes and conducted usability tests with our customers. Alongside these tests, I also ran in-depth interviews, guided by three key questions that helped clarify the remaining uncertainties we had.
Key questions asked during the test:
1 – How important is the live feature in your current strategy?
2 – Do you record your live sessions? (If yes, what do you do with them?)
3 – What is the biggest challenge you face today regarding the live format?
🏁 Solution and Design Decisions
The proposed solution focused on providing a scheduling tool for multiple live sessions, where the infoproduct creator can choose whether or not to record the sessions and automatically make the recordings available on the student’s platform.
💡 The automatic video upload feature was only included in the initial version of the project after its value was demonstrated during the research and validation stages.
No installation required
The tool was integrated via API into the members area—the student platform—which simplifies access by eliminating the need to install other apps and protects the content, as each student must log in with a unique username and password.
User centered Design
Multiple Sessions for Up to 400 Simultaneous Participants: During the research phase, we discovered that building a tool for group sessions with multiple participants addressed a more pressing need than a scheduling tool for one-on-one mentorships. The latter is easier to manage and less frequent among our users.
Product Creation: Since we have two different “live” product types on the platform, usability tests revealed the need to help infoproduct creators quickly identify which option best suits their needs. To address this, I added tags to the product cards for quicker scanning and used illustrations to visually represent the differences between each solution.
LGPD Compliance: Following recommendations from the legal team, we implemented a recording consent modal that appears before a student joins a live session. This ensures legal protection for both Hero and the infoproduct creator.
Revenue Model: A fixed fee was applied to the sale of each “Live Meeting” product—meaning the infoproduct creator only pays if they make a sale, making the tool financially sustainable.
✨ Learnings:
🔹 Engaging stakeholders and ensuring ongoing alignment is essential. In large and complex projects, everyone needs to understand the decisions made—and why they were made—to avoid rework.
🔹 Collaboration is key: the more minds working on a problem, the more creative solutions emerge, and the more technical limitations are identified during the ideation phase, saving time and resources.
🔹 An effective MVP addresses the user's core pain point. Scope reduction is part of the process, but poorly planned cuts can compromise the value delivered. The product designer must ensure that research and test findings are documented and shared, giving stakeholders the input they need for strategic decisions.
© Daniele Maria Horning • 2025