— PART 1
The High of the Spark
✨ Spark
It all began with a simple but electrifying question. Mr. J, my boss at the time, shared a vision for a multi-purpose audio editing platform centered on podcast creation.
👓 Discovery
Our research was clear. We spoke to dozens of podcasters, mixers, and video creators who relied on complex desktop tools like Logic Pro, Audacity, and Premiere. Their workflows were powerful but rigid — built around horizontal timelines and stacked tracks. Yet, their biggest frustration was mobility. When inspiration struck on a train or in a café, their only option was crude voice notes. There was no easy way for them to create professional-grade audio tracks on the go.
🤔 Big question
That insight led to the challenge: How might we translate these intricate, horizontal desktop workflows into the small, vertical space of a smartphone? The answer was Breadslice — our metaphor for slicing a complex project into simple, manageable pieces. It felt revolutionary. We were convinced Breadslice could redefine mobile creation, even if our excitement bordered on naïve optimism.
🤝 Craft
I was the sole product designer on board in the team. We worked tirelessly across time zones, fueled by coffee and conviction. I designed, prototyped, and tested relentlessly, refining every interaction and simplifying every layer. Each iteration brought us closer to something special. By the end, my design files held over 3,000 UIs - proof of our shared obsession to craft not just an app, but a masterpiece for creators on the move.
The endless reiterations
Below is Breadslice's main interface over time, from 2021 to 2024.
What the users loved
They loved the ability to fine-tune things based on how precise the tools we offered were. "Slow but steady and precise" they said. But the cherry on top was how we also offered them tools that they could quickly use in the "Slice" interface.
— PART 2
How scope creep killed Breadslice
The pressure of the tight market
The creator economy was booming, but creators were stuck in a fragmented ecosystem. Each month meant more creators settling for inefficient workflows. Meanwhile, competition was heating up as TikTok was shaping expectations for fast, polished content, and new creator tools kept emerging.
The window of opportunity was closing, and the danger of being left behind was real.
After 2 months of building and refining the prototype with J, we had a beautiful, functional product that captured our vision. During testing, creators loved it and wanted it, even in a simpler form. They saw Breadslice as a way to streamline their workflow on the go.
The next step was obvious: launch the MVP, get it into creators’ hands, and iterate fast. Or was it?…
The humongous scope creep
"It's not ready," he'd say. Sometimes it was a minor detail in a build, like a transition that was a few milliseconds off or an icon that he felt "didn't perfectly capture our ethos." But more often, the perfectionism manifested as a constant desire to add more features just to test things out, bloating the scope.
We spent two whole months just deciding how the label structure would work. Then another month was lost debating what the video reaction recording feature would be like, followed by another month just designing the reaction interfaces. At the time, I was just blindly following along, creating hundreds of layout options for what were, in hindsight, very menial tasks. I initially agreed with this pursuit of quality, but I grew nervous over time, and so did our developers.
Too much testing, too little outcome, and the last straw
Alongside my colleagues we argued that an imperfectly launched product that users could shape was better than a perfect product that never saw the light of day. I pleaded for more user research on the prototype to validate our MVP feature set. He saw it as a compromise, a dilution of the grand vision. For him, every single detail had to be perfect before launch. He couldn't be satisfied. Week after week, we'd circle back, iterating on features that were already good enough, while our runway got shorter and shorter.
My attempts to push back were seen as a lack of commitment to quality. The micromanagement intensified. The project that was once a source of exhilarating purpose, became a gilded cage.
The end was simple and brutal: We ran out of funds. But honestly, no one was to blame.
The investors, who had once shared J's vision, grew tired of the endless delays and the lack of a market-ready product and then backed out. Breadslice, after countless iterations and two and a half years of my life, was unceremoniously moved to the bin.
The failure was absolute for months, I was haunted by the thought that I had wasted a significant chunk of my career building nothing. Maybe the cynics were right. Maybe it would have been better to stay in my comfortable role, building incremental improvements to existing products, rather than chasing the impossible dream of revolutionizing creator workflows.
I had to move on, but first, I had to understand what I’d lost, and what I’d gained.
— PART 3
Rising again from the wreckage
Lesson one -
Being ambitious is good, but know your scope and their problem
Lesson two -
Manage micromanagement & expectations, instead of fighting it
Lesson three -
