CHITCHAT

Making money transfers as easy as sending a message

Creating brand alignment and building a mobile-first financial product for Africa.

It'same... Paula!

Context

ChitChat is a UK-based startup building a mobile-first financial product. The team was exploring product–market fit while scaling core features.I joined as Senior UX Designer to support product definition and delivery across mobile and brand touchpoints.

My Role

Senior UX Designer

  • End-to-end product ownership
  • Android & iOS (shared codebase)
  • Core flows & UX direction
  • Visual identity evolution
  • Physical debit card & packaging design
  • Cross-functional collaboration with Product & Engineering

The Problem

Build a cohesive mobile product while:

  • Clarifying target audience
  • Iterating rapidly
  • Maintaining alignment across brand and app
  • Managing engineering constraints

The team ultimately decided to sunset the product after identifying misalignment in audience targeting.

Key Constraints

  • Early-stage ambiguity
  • Limited validated user data
  • Fast iteration cycles
  • Shared mobile codebase

Approach

  1. Product Framing
    Worked with Product to define key user journeys and simplify scope.
  2. Design for a Shared Codebase
    Created consistent interaction patterns that worked efficiently across platforms.
  3. Cohesive Product Experience
    Ensured consistency across:
    1. App UI
    2. Marketing assets
    3. Physical debit card
    4. Packaging

Key Decisions

  • Prioritized clarity in core transactional flows
  • Reduced feature scope to test core value proposition
  • Designed brand assets to reinforce product trust and credibility

Outcomes

  • Delivered cohesive mobile experience across platforms
  • Strengthened cross-functional product alignment
  • Contributed to strategic reassessment of product-market fit

Reflection

This experience reinforced that product design is not just about shipping features — it’s about helping teams make better product decisions, even when that leads to difficult strategic conclusions.