Leading Product Vision at theSkimm
Blending vision, research, and collaboration to shape theSkimm’s next chapter.
Background
theSkimm’s flagship product is its daily newsletter, which delivers essential news and insights to help readers start their day informed. After the newsletter’s success, theSkimm expanded into new formats including web content, podcasts, live events, and commerce.
The Challenge
By mid-2023, theSkimm began to evolve its mission, shifting from simply informing readers to also educating them, connecting them with resources, and empowering them to take meaningful action in their lives. Our team was tasked with developing a new product to support this strategic shift.
Note: Confidential information has been omitted in accordance with my NDA.
Vision Week
In August 2023, I led a week-long cross-functional workshop with team members from Product, Data, Engineering, and Content to co-create a product vision statement. This short statement articulates the product’s purpose and the better future it aims to enable.
While a strong vision statement is foundational for aligning stakeholders, words alone aren't always enough. People are visual by nature. That’s where the tangible vision comes in: a story-driven, visual expression of the vision statement. If the vision statement is the elevator pitch, the tangible vision is what plays in your mind when you hear it. It makes the abstract feel real.
Throughout the week, participants wrote personal vision statements, mapped user needs using a Value Proposition Canvas, and created aspirational storyboards. By the end, we aligned on a comprehensive Product Vision Canvas that outlined our users, their needs, key features, experience principles, and guiding product themes.
Tangible Vision
The team aligned on a clear vision statement: empower millennial women to get ahead in life. My next task was to bring that vision to life through design.
While a tangible vision is often expressed as a high-fidelity storyboard, my stakeholders felt a working prototype would more effectively convey what we were building toward. A prototype could capture not just the story, but the structure, flow, and potential experience of the product.
I began by conducting competitive research to understand how similar needs were being addressed in the market. From there, I iterated on potential user flows and collaborated with stakeholders to align on a direction. Once we landed on a shared vision for the experience, I translated our wireframes into a clickable prototype to help teams visualize and rally around our product direction.
Conclusion
This work became the North Star our team relied on while building the MVP. While not perfect, it absolutely accomplished our goal: aligning teams around a shared vision for the future of theSkimm.
What this work means for our users:
Personalized experiences that anticipate her life stage, needs, and goals
Tools that reduce her mental load
Access to expert guidance for education and coaching
Clear pathways to help her achieve personal growth
What this work means for the company:
A closer, more meaningful relationship with our core user
Multiple monetizable touchpoints across the user journey
A revenue model built on three distinct streams
A platform for gathering and activating zero-party data
A defensible moat rooted in deep user insight and trust
After wrapping the vision work, we went heads down on the MVP.
Check out the live beta site here.
