Product design for a women-only English practice community

About HeyLady

HeyLady is a women-only online community where members practice spoken English. Their mission is to spark one billion meaningful conversations between women of different cultures.

Challenge

HeyLady grew fast without a dedicated product designer. The team wanted to expand how members connect (beyond 1:1 chat), adjust the experience around conversation value, and rethink onboarding to reduce time-to-value for new members. The main objectives were to add product thinking, unify the UX, and iteratively improve and expand conversation experiences.

What Merge delivered

We created a design system and established user-centred processes. We designed a speaking assessment, redesigned chat with groups and channels, improved Events and Live Coffee Tables, and rethought onboarding with product-led growth to reduce time-to-value. Continuous iteration, research, and clean handoffs enabled rapid, consistent delivery across the platform.

Onboarding redesign

HeyLady asked us to help redesign onboarding around first value. We replaced long tours with a product-led flow that moves newcomers into a real conversation much faster. The flow guides each member to either a scheduled Event or a Live Coffee Table, depending on availability and comfort. We measured success by how quickly a newcomer finds and joins their first conversation and how confident they feel afterward.

Events redesign

We also improved Events so members can find the right conversation without digging. Events are scheduled sessions with a host who sets a topic and a plan.

We mapped the journey from browsing to joining and removed blockers. Discovery now highlights what’s timely and relevant, filters help members narrow by interest and format, and copy, labels, and empty states now make the next steps more obvious.

Interviews

We began interviewing the founders and team, then Community Success and coaches, to find out pain points in chat groups, channels, and event discovery. Our team also ran targeted member interviews and shaped Jobs-to-be-Done around three goals: find someone to talk to now, prepare for a work opportunity, and build confidence. We then used the insights to design and simplify member and admin flows and prioritize the team’s effort.

Design System & Figma

To help with consistency, our team built a reusable design system with tokens, components, patterns, etc. In parallel, we fixed the Figma workspace. We audited legacy files, mapped gaps between mocks and the live product, and created a single source of truth. Libraries were split by platform and role, with clear naming and variants. We fixed page structures, cover templates, and version notes. Overall, the result is faster delivery, fewer repeats, and easier onboarding.

Designing for real and meaningful conversations

Traditional levels like B1 or C1 don’t always match how someone sounds in a live conversation. HeyLady needed a method that respects confidence, fluency under pressure, and practical interaction. We designed a speaking assessment that matches those realities.

Chat and messaging

We also expanded the design from basic one-to-one messaging into group chats and channels, and refined the two core conversation modes. One became easier to find through improved discovery and filters, and the other now supports spontaneous real-time English practice.

Collaboration results so far

Our work resulted in a new design system, a conversation-focused speaking assessment, a redesigned chat with groups and channels, clearer Events discovery, and Live Coffee Tables for instant practice.

We helped shift onboarding to a product-led approach that shortens time-to-value by guiding newcomers into their first conversation quickly. What kept kept decisions grounded and doable was our collaboration with in-house developers and the Community Success team.

Member feedback has been encouraging as new pieces roll out. After the first Events update, one member even wrote, “Great update to the event filters,” noting how much more convenient discovery felt. Internally, the new design system has improved communication between product and engineering.

Final words

Special thanks to HeyLady’s team for exceptional collaboration and understanding the value of design thinking.