0 to 1 Product
MVP Scoping
Investor Pitch
Front-End Build
Role
Sole UX/UI designer
Scope
MVP design, landing page (design and build), pitch deck
Team
Founder, offshore development team
Timeline
5 weeks, 2024
Outcome
MVP design, live landing page and pitch deck; Zonely won the Fishburners pitch night
Status
Delivered
In short
In 2024, I worked with Alicia Nagle on Zonely: a platform to help people find others to play social sport with, starting with golf. I had five weeks to take it from an idea to an MVP design, a live landing page and a pitch deck for investors. I was the only designer.
001
The MVP screens. Onboarding, account management, event booking and content pages, designed in five weeks.
The brief
The founder ran her golf community through Facebook, which was hard to manage. Players found it hard to find partners, often because of safety concerns about meeting strangers, and venues had tee times going unused.
The MVP had two jobs: give players a simple way to book and find people to play with, and give the founder something credible to show investors. The branding came from the founder. I made small adjustments and chose the typography.
002
On the course. Zonely’s brand photography.
Scoping for five weeks
With five weeks and a fixed budget, I planned the work week by week and kept the scope tight. Research was a scoping session with the founder, a review of competitors like GolfNow, TeeNet and Future Golf, and a round at Balgowlah Golf Club where I talked to players directly. The round also helped me learn golf’s terminology, which the founder used fluently and I didn’t.
I drafted four personas from the research, then cut them to the two most important, so the MVP could serve them well. The features came down to three:
Booking tee times
Matching players by skill level, availability and preferences
Safety features to build trust between strangers
Booking was the core flow, so I designed it first, from wireframes to high fidelity.
003
The event booking flow. From browsing or searching events through to payment and confirmation, including the optional merchandise upsell.
Building the landing page myself
The plan was to hand the landing page to an offshore development team. With the time zone difference, a language barrier and the cost of onboarding them to the product, that wouldn’t fit in five weeks. I proposed building it myself instead, which kept it on schedule and freed up budget for other work. It was also my first real front-end build.
004
The live landing page. Designed and built by me, because handing it to the offshore team wouldn’t have fit into five weeks.
Designing for investors as well as players
The MVP’s purpose was to validate the idea and attract investment, so the pitch deck and landing page mattered as much as the app. I worked with the founder on the deck’s visuals and story: Zonely’s value for players and venues, and why golf was the right sport to start with.
005
Outcome
I delivered the MVP design, a live landing page and the pitch deck within five weeks. The founder took Zonely into the UTS Startups growth funding program, and it won the Fishburners pitch night using the deck I made. I moved to Webjet in 2025, so I don’t know how the product developed after that.
006
Pitching Zonely. The founder presenting with the deck I designed. Zonely went on to win the Fishburners pitch night.
Reflection
The founder paid for five weeks, so I traded depth of research for getting a complete MVP and investor materials done in time. Testing was limited to the founder’s feedback and conversations with players on the course.
Next time, I’d build a small validation step into the proposal, like testing the booking flow with five golfers before moving to high fidelity, so it’s part of the budget rather than something to fit in if there’s time.
007
