Peter Uzzi
Product + Design Leader
Designing a new Consumer vertical for Clover
Clover Consumer background
Clover, a leading point-of-sale and small business management platform, pivoted quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic to support online ordering, helping merchants stay afloat amid widespread shutdowns. However, with no established consumer market presence, merchants relied on word of mouth to promote Clover’s new capabilities. I was tasked with creating a vision for a new Consumer business vertical. As an independent contractor (later converted to full-time Principal Designer), I led this initiative end-to-end from discovery to execution, developed a go-to-market strategy, conducted consumer and merchant testing for the two-sided network, and delivered a data-driven North Star vision to Clover’s executives.
Role: Design and Strategy Contractor
Contributions: Product Management, Product Strategy and Vision, UX Research and Testing, UI Design, Prototyping, Executive Storytelling
Team: Product Manager, Engineering team
Timeline: 3 Months
Milestones: Discovery and problem framing workshops, Strategy workshops, UX Research, UX Interviews, Lean Testing, Design, Pilot launch, Validation testing
Note: Some images are intentionally low-resolution or zoomed out, with text redacted, to protect confidentiality.
The Challenge
Clover is primarily a merchant-facing brand; consumers recognize it as point-of-sale hardware. Clover is uniquely positioned to offer merchants more affordable first-party online ordering and fulfillment services within its network but they were struggling to convince busy merchants to break from their routines and their loyalty to existing third-party solutions.
Clover also needed to convince consumers to shift from established aggregators like DoorDash and UberEats. This would require substantial marketing investment and competitive incentives. A compelling story would be needed to drive engagement from merchants and consumers.
Storyboarding is a key tool to align teams quickly and solicit ideas from cross-functional stakeholders.
I employed rapid low-fidelity prototyping to crystalize storyboards into experiments.
Execution
Beginning with a project plan, I aligned teams and defined milestones and KPIs. I conducted research and design, and collaborated with engineering architects. Leveraging custom business model canvases and strategy frameworks I developed in previous consulting roles, I designed and facilitated workshops with Product, Design, Engineering, and executive stakeholders.
I worked with the Product and Finance teams to explore monetization models for consumer incentives, identified and tested value propositions for merchants and consumers, and regularly reported progress to executives.
I facilitated workshops to draw out organizational knowledge and help teams align.
Once teams and executives aligned on the problem to be solved, I engaged them in a design sprint where we sketched and prototyped possible solutions.
These workshops focused on problem framing, research prioritization, and user behavior goals. Through discovery sessions, design sprints, research synthesis, and Lean experiments with Production users, I helped align stakeholders around a clearly defined problem and two solution hypotheses.
While I cannot disclose specific strategies and solutions due to confidentiality, this study demonstrates how I lead as a Principal Designer, from “zero to one”, employing a full stack of skills beyond design, from strategy to data-driven experimentation. These efforts ultimately guided the business toward a well-informed investment decision.
After identifying and prototyping possible solutions, we interviewed and presented concepts to users. Card sorting is one of many helpful tools I employed in synthesizing our user feedback.
Working with Product and Technology teams, I uncovered gaps in our technical capabilities hindering us from delivering an ideal experience to users. I employed design storytelling to align executives and secure resources to test possible solutions.
To communicate the vision, I created a medium-fidelity storyboard vision and guided stakeholders through potential future user journeys. After receiving positive feedback, I further supported the Product team by drafting a roadmap that included user stories for merchants, consumers, and technical swim lanes. This visualization and estimation process helped clarify business goals and priorities.
Effective storytelling imagines a possible future, visualizing real consumer personas interacting with this future state.
This vision walks stakeholders through both the consumer and merchant journey.
After some promising in-product Lean experiments with Production users, I moved forward to expand the concept into a two-sided network user story map with sequenced acquisition and activation goals.
My story concepts and strategic goals above influenced enhancements to merchant-facing tools and upgrade opportunities to premium Customer Engagement tools.
Solution and Impact
During this three-month engagement, I elevated Clover’s design program by demonstrating how Lean principles, product strategy, and effective design storytelling can empower Design to influence business outcomes and lead strategic portfolio initiatives.
After testing various consumer incentive models and merchant engagement strategies, we saw increased engagement within pilot cohorts. However, high go-to-market costs remained prohibitive, and I helped inform a no-go investment decision, ultimately saving Clover millions of dollars. While a dedicated consumer business vertical was not funded, our design sprints uncovered critical opportunities to meet other unaddressed user needs. Many solution concepts I introduced led to prioritized investments in adjacent consumer projects, such as my vision for expanding merchant-facing consumer engagement tools. This vision later evolved into a project I led: a verticalized merchant website Content Management System for custom merchant storefronts featuring Clover’s first scheduling and booking tools that expanded Clover’s reach beyond restaurants into services. This work is now live with merchants and consumers.
Many of the artifacts I produced for this project remained a reference point in subsequent years for Clover’s Product organization, with more elements incorporated into Clover’s loyalty and online ordering initiatives. Ultimately, the process and vision I demonstrated in a consulting capacity became a model for Clover’s Design program, earning positive feedback from cross-functional partners and executives, and our merchants.
