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Early-stage / seed

Hivedeck

Building the communication foundation for an AI-powered website builder from the ground up — before legacy messaging or habits could get in the way.

Role

Product messaging & UX writing

Focus

Onboarding, AI prompt architecture, lifecycle

Company

Early-stage website builder for food vendors

The opportunity

No legacy messaging to undo — just a foundation to build right the first time.

Hivedeck wasn't constrained by legacy messaging or established workflows. Instead, it needed a clear foundation that could help new users quickly understand the product, complete onboarding, and confidently create their first website.

Every interaction, from the landing page to the product interface, had an opportunity to reduce uncertainty and guide users toward activation.

Contributions

Six areas, from first message to first website.

[messaging]

Product messaging

Developed the product's messaging from the ground up, defining how Hivedeck introduced itself across its website and product experience — clear, but approachable for varying technical confidence.

[ux writing]

UX writing system

Wrote interface copy across the product so navigation, actions, empty states, and onboarding worked together as one consistent experience. Clarity over cleverness.

[onboarding]

Onboarding experience

Designed the flow from sign-up to first website as a conversation, not a sequence of forms — gradually collecting what the product needed while explaining why.

[ai logic]

AI prompt architecture

Designed a conditional prompt architecture with a structured if/else decision flow, adapting to each user's context so the AI felt purposeful rather than generic.

[lifecycle]

Lifecycle communication

Developed onboarding, engagement, and retention emails to support continued product adoption after sign-up.

[product]

Product decisions

Regularly participated in product discussions — evaluating ideas, identifying usability issues, and refining decisions as development progressed.

Where it stands

Status: early-stage, communication foundation in place

Hivedeck remained an early-stage product throughout this engagement. The work established the product's full communication foundation — messaging, UX writing, onboarding, AI interaction logic, and lifecycle communication — as a consistent framework that can evolve alongside the product.

Reflection

Good communication isn't layered onto a product after it's built. It's part of how the product works.

Designing the AI onboarding flow made this concrete: the quality of the experience depended not only on what the AI said, but on the logic that determined why it said it. That shaped how I think about product design today.