Driving Product Activation Through Typography
A mid-sprint pivot from SEO acquisition to an internal discoverability engine.
Kittl possessed a highly valuable asset: a world-class typography library featuring proprietary in-house fonts and a premium Monotype collaboration. However, there was a fundamental flaw in our product architecture—these assets were completely siloed inside the editor's dropdown menus.
My initial mandate on the Growth team was to expose this library to the public web to capture organic search traffic. But halfway through our aggressive 15-day sprint, technical realities forced a massive strategic pivot.
My Role
I led the strategic conceptualization, research, and UX design of the Kittl Font Directory. Operating under tight timelines, I conducted extensive competitive intelligence, established the product's taxonomy, and navigated a critical mid-project pivot alongside Growth and Product.
The Research: Defining a Premium Typography Experience
Before designing the architecture, I needed to define the baseline expectations for professional font discovery. If our directory felt like a basic spreadsheet, designers would bounce.
I conducted a deep-dive competitive analysis of 16 distinct players in the typography space. I audited massive aggregators (like Google Fonts, Adobe Fonts, and MyFonts) alongside elite, boutique foundries (like Lineto, Sharp Type, and Monotype).
[snapshot of competitive analysis]
The Insight: The best foundries don't just list fonts; they provide a tactile playground. Based on this audit, I defined the "table-stakes" features our system required:
- Live Text Previews: Dynamic sizing and custom text input.
- Deep Categorization: Filtering not just by formal classification (Serif, Sans, Slab), but by Theme (Retro, Funky) and Appearance (Art Deco, Technologic).
- Typographic Properties: Advanced filtering for weight, width, x-height, and contrast to serve professional user intent.
The Friction: The Mid-Sprint Reality Check
Armed with this deep architectural research, we began the build. But halfway through our sprint, we hit a wall.
The technical scope of building a seamless, public-facing SEO directory that could deep-link unauthenticated users directly into our complex web editor was simply too massive for our 15-day timeline.
I facilitated a strategic alignment between the Growth and Product teams. We decided to de-risk the project by pivoting our core intent: instead of using the directory as a top-of-funnel SEO acquisition lever, we would test its appetite internally as an activation and discoverability feature for logged-in users.
The Strategy: Designing for Workflow, Not Web Crawlers
This pivot completely changed the UX requirements. We were no longer designing for Google's SEO crawlers; we were designing for our users' actual creative workflows. I synthesized my foundry research into three core user behaviors:
1. The Inspiration Search Establishing the directory as a starting point. Leveraging the exact taxonomy from my competitive audit, users could browse by vibe, visual style, or formal category before they even opened a blank canvas.
2. The Bookmark Action To reduce friction in the actual editor, I introduced a saving mechanism. Users could curate their personal font libraries by bookmarking typefaces directly from the catalog, keeping their favorite assets just a click away.
3. The Template Bridge The most critical feature for driving product activation. Instead of a dead-end detail page, every single font profile dynamically pulled in Kittl's hand-made templates. If a user was exploring a specific retro serif, they were instantly served high-quality, editable designs utilizing that exact typeface right below the type tester—connecting inspiration directly to creation.
The Outcome: Simplifying the Creative Process
By actively managing scope and pivoting when necessary, we avoided shipping a compromised public page. Instead, we successfully launched a powerful internal discoverability engine.
The new Font Directory fundamentally simplified the design process. By bridging the gap between raw, premium typography and high-quality templates, we gave users a new way to interact with our platform—turning the act of browsing fonts into a direct catalyst for active product engagement.
Looking Ahead: Proving the Case for Public SEOThe internal Font Directory is now live. By pivoting to a logged-in experience, we de-risked the technical build while delivering immediate workflow value to our existing users.However, the original growth hypothesis remains. The next step for this product is to rigorously capture engagement data—specifically tracking how often font exploration leads to template activation. Once we prove that this UX loop successfully drives creation, we will use those engagement metrics to build a rock-solid, data-backed business case to secure the engineering resources needed to expand this architecture into the fully public, SEO-optimized acquisition engine we initially envisioned.
Looking Ahead: Proving the Case for Public SEO
The internal Font Directory is now live. By pivoting to a logged-in experience, we de-risked the technical build while delivering immediate workflow value to our existing users.
However, the original growth hypothesis remains. The next step for this product is to rigorously capture engagement data—specifically tracking how often font exploration leads to template activation. Once we prove that this UX loop successfully drives creation, we will use those engagement metrics to build a rock-solid, data-backed business case to secure the engineering resources needed to expand this architecture into the fully public, SEO-optimized acquisition engine we initially envisioned.