Design leadership for a volunteer-run startup
Context
Background
This project was for BetterSG, a tech for good volunteering group in Singapore
In 2021, the group set out to make DEI and interfaith dialogue more accessible by creating a digital solution that could scale across institutions for Singapore.
The solution space carried real risk: cultural misrepresentation, ethical potholes, and a limited financial runway.
My role
I served as Co-Project Lead and Design Lead, owning both product direction and the management of the design and art team.
team structure
Establishing ethical governance in a high-risk domain
A socially risky product
The product is a visual novel where users play through characters from different ethnic and social backgrounds. While powerful, this was a format vulnerable to cultural misrepresentation and social backlash.
Grounded research as team's guiding force
As Co-Project lead, I formalized research as a governing function, recruiting professional researchers and facilitators as decision authorities over narrative content.
This decision proved astute. When a prominent religious group attempted to block the project, our documented methodology protected the organization from reputational damage.
Leading with Design
Leading with design methodology
One of the unique skills I bought to the leadership role as a designer was how I handled team disagreements on what should be done.
During such disagreements, I would employ my design training to redirect team members back to our project goals. Does Method A help promote empathy? What about Method B? How do they compare? Can we test this?
Often, these reminders and probing helped team members re-align and agree on how to proceed.
Leading with Design
Leading with prototypes
Diverse viewpoints
At various critical points of the project, team members would have divergent ideas and no shared consensus. Progress stalled.
Prototyping for alignment
I used prototyping to break indecision, align the team in a single direction to regain project momentum, including securing $50,000 in seed funding.
Team ops
Designing for volunteer-driven execution
The Challenge
A remote team of volunteers
The team was 100% unpaid volunteers with inconsistent availability and high churn risk. Delivery stability was not guaranteed.
The SOLUTIOn
A digital hub
My co-Project Lead and I built asynchronous operating infrastructure that allowed remote contributors to plug in and out without destabilizing progress.
For design, I introduced spec documentation and best practices to maintain cohesion despite distributed execution.
A sample page of the Notion system we built. Each team had their own sections, and onboarding had its own page to ensure new comers could self-serve
I documented processes and guidelines on Google Slides so that (1) illustrators could easily access the visual reference they needed, (2) multiple team members could contribute and access the information.
Design leadership
Upholding design quality under constraints
Budget and engineering capacity were limited throughout development.
I defined an art direction executable by emerging designers and fledgling engineers while maintaining visual cohesion and perceived quality. This helped us balance cost efficiency with perceived quality.
As design lead, I also ensured cross-surface consistency and quaity across brand identity, product UI, marketing, and social channels.
A stylescape from our branding work. I worked with the talented May Chiang to create the logo and identity design.
Impact
general public
We first released to the public with a MVP on July 2021 and finished all 6 planned characters in 2023. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive:
20,000+
Playthroughs
1,000+
New players per month
10%
Referral rates from current players
Organisation adoption
As of the start of 2023, we were voluntarily adopted by teachers from 10+ schools, and by 6 organisations and corporates for cultural sensitivity training.
15+
Schools and coporates adopted our solution
