Zero-to-One Team Build Against the Clock

When Holland & Barrett decided to move into digital wellness, I was brought in to build the team and the product from nothing, with a six-month window to take Ivie from concept to market. There was no existing team to inherit and no established process to lean on, so the first task was assembling the right people fast enough to make the deadline realistic at all.

I hired a specialist product designer on a short-term contract to bring in experience we didn't have in-house, and brought on a brand designer and UX researcher permanently, since their work would need to continue well beyond this one product. With the team in place, I set up regular feedback loops that ran from other designers through to members of the public and H&B's own health directors and board members, so the product was being tested against real scrutiny throughout rather than only at the end.

The technology itself created its own obstacles. The lab handling the tests wasn't set up for the volume we needed, and the systems linking the app, the lab, and the doctors reviewing results existed only as separate pieces that had to be connected through design decisions rather than off-the-shelf infrastructure.

Ivie launched on time, rolled out to over 500 shops across the UK, and has held a 4.8 app store rating since.