Case study
Designing a SaaS tool that helps marketers swipe better
Product Design
UX Design
Wireframing
Intro
FunnelStream.pro is a product I designed that was never launched. The idea came to me after hearing marketers complain about the hassle of constantly “swiping” campaigns.
In marketing, “swiping” means copying successful ads, emails, and full funnels to use in your own work. It saves time and lets you build on what’s already working - e.g. targeting the right audience, using effective messaging, or handling specific objections. I designed FunnelStream.pro to make this process easier by automatically gathering and organising marketing materials across different channels in one tool.
Problem
While there are tools out there designed to spy on competitor campaigns, most of these focus on metrics over actual content. The few tools that do help with “swiping” still require you to manually screenshot each marketing asset, which is incredibly time-consuming. Marketers are often busy and don’t have the time to manually sign up with dummy emails or screenshot every ad they come across. What they really need is a way to hit “subscribe” and automatically keep tabs on what their competitors are doing.
Solution
Through user research, I realised the challenge isn’t just auto-saving ads and emails, it’s about presenting them in a way that’s useful. In marketing, everything your competitor does is technically “visible” (you can find ads through tools like the Meta Ads Library). However, putting together a complete funnel is difficult because you often only see fragments of their strategy. To fix this, I designed a tool that not only automatically saves ads and subscribes to competitors’ content, but also visualises these “streams” in a way that's easy to share with clients.
01. Discovery 🎯
As someone with 20+ friends in marketing, I had plenty of opportunities for user research. But I decided to follow a structured discovery process to stay objective.
User Research:
I ran interviews with 3 marketers. Instead of asking generic questions ("How do you do XYZ?"), I used a common UX trick to get more information by asking people to recall past experiences ("What did you do the last time XYZ happened?")
From these interviews, I discovered that marketers mainly swipe assets on their desktop computers, where they do most of their work. However, not having an easy way to swipe ads from your phone was a common frustration.
Another big challenge is understanding the full scope of a competitor’s campaign. Marketers often struggle to determine how long a campaign runs, making it challenging to collect all relevant assets. As a result, most marketers’ swipe folders are sparse, containing just a handful of assets from campaigns that might include dozens of assets.
Contextual Enquiries:
To better understand how marketers swipe, I did some contextual enquiries with two marketers, asking them to share their screens while they browsed social media and saved ads. As they worked, I asked questions to gain deeper insights.
I found that all of them used full-page screenshotting plugins, saving images to Google Drive. This was often frustrating, as they had to spend multiple sessions capturing everything. Plus, even after a campaign was saved, they often forgot to organise it into a visualised funnel - a great way to explain project scope to clients.
One marketer demonstrated how he dragged images into FigJam to create funnels. He preferred FigJam over a tool like “Funnelytics” because it offers a more freeform experience and is cheaper. Additionally, FigJam lets him keep his swiped funnels separate from the professional funnels he builds for clients. Tools like “Funnelytics” charge for multiple active funnels and can become cluttered, making FigJam a more practical choice for his needs.
Service Blueprint:
I chose a service blueprint over an empathy map for this project because FunnelStream.pro is focused on solving practical, functional issues rather than emotional ones. While empathy maps are great for understanding user feelings, the key here was to map out the step-by-step process of how marketers interact with the tool. A service blueprint allowed me to detail the entire user journey, from initial use to backend processes, ensuring the design effectively addressed the real-world tasks marketers face every day.
02. Ideation 🧠
At this stage, I felt confident that I had a solid understanding of what marketers needed from a tool. It was time to start brainstorming solutions to address their pain points.
Brainstorming:
To kick off the ideation process, I enlisted the help of a friend who works as a SaaS developer. Together, we held a brainstorming session where we generated a list of core features that would effectively solve the problems marketers face. Having a SaaS expert on hand made it easier to assess the feasibility of these ideas, letting us prioritise the most practical and impactful.
User Journey Mapping:
I mapped out the user journey to pinpoint key touchpoints where FunnelStream.pro could deliver the most value. Starting from the moment a user first interacts with the tool—by swiping an ad directly from a social media platform—I followed the subsequent steps, including their interaction with the tool a few days later to check on progress. This process helped identify critical moments where the tool needed to be most effective, ensuring a seamless and valuable user experience throughout their journey.
03. Design 🎨
With a clear understanding of the user journey and key features, I was ready to create wireframes and mock up the product. I settled on the name “FunnelStream” as this best describes the tool in a simple and visual way.
(Choosing a name that’s easy to grasp and uses visual language is great for branding. It instantly communicates the product's value, making it more memorable and exciting).
Wireframing:
I designed wireframes for all the major screens on the platform, making sure none of the features from our brainstorming session were forgotten.
I decided to use an overlay for key interactions, letting users pop open a specific stream and edit everything within the same view. This design pattern is common in SaaS platforms marketers are already familiar with. Overlays keep users focused on their current task without forcing them to navigate away from the main screen. This approach streamlines workflows, reduces friction, and makes UX more intuitive, especially for professionals who need to manage multiple tasks efficiently.
UI Design:
For the UI design, I drew inspiration from other well-known, validated marketing tools. According to Jakob’s Law, users expect your product to work similarly to what they’ve experienced before. By using common design conventions, I wanted to reduce cognitive load and make the tool more intuitive.
I also created simple prototypes in Figma and invited one marketer to test them out. Their feedback indicated that the navigation could be clearer, so I streamlined the design, removing unnecessary options and focusing on the core elements.
I also created simple prototypes in Figma and invited one marketer to test them out. Their feedback indicated that the navigation could be clearer, so I streamlined the design, removing unnecessary options and focusing on the core elements.
I also created simple prototypes in Figma and invited one marketer to test them out. Their feedback indicated that the navigation could be clearer, so I streamlined the design, removing unnecessary options and focusing on the core elements.
I also created simple prototypes in Figma and invited one marketer to test them out. Their feedback indicated that the navigation could be clearer, so I streamlined the design, removing unnecessary options and focusing on the core elements.
04. Reflection 🧭
Since this was a spec project that never got fully built, I didn't have the opportunity to validate all my ideas with a completed product post-launch. However, the process taught me about the power of basing product designs on thorough user research.
One thing I realise in hindsight is that I may have overlooked some of the finer details. Initially, I envisioned the project as a Google Chrome plugin, but as the design evolved, I focused more on the end dashboard. While it made sense to prioritise visualising funnels, I now see that I should have spent more time considering how users would interact with the product directly from the web browser, as this would be their primary point of connection—saving items from Chrome and then checking on the dashboard later.
In spite of this, I’m proud of what I designed. I believe this tool aligns well with what the market needs, at least based on the insights from the group of marketers I interviewed.