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Charrmello was a subscription audio platform I co-founded and designed end-to-end. Mobile app, web platform, brand, content strategy. Two distinct product phases: the first built around immersive audio drama ('audio cinema'), the second a strategic pivot into audio learning after market validation showed stronger demand.

Both versions were designed mobile-first. The drama phase leaned into a cinematic visual language to match the audio quality. The learning phase stripped that back for clarity and utility, prioritising content discovery and structured listening paths. The pivot wasn't cosmetic. It meant rethinking the information architecture, the onboarding flow, and the entire content model.

I ran a 100+ participant research programme before we wrote a line of product code. Landing page tests, prototype walkthroughs, one-to-one interviews. We secured 50+ pre-launch sign-ups for a product that didn't exist yet. That validation shaped every design decision from that point forward.

When the data told us entertainment wasn't the strongest market, we pivoted. That meant redesigning the app, rebuilding the content pipeline, and renegotiating the product's identity with the team. I led all three. I also managed the remote engineering team that built the Alpha platform, and contributed directly to the V2 codebase myself (MERN stack, Firebase) when we needed to move faster than the team could resource.

This is the project where I learned that conviction without evidence is just stubbornness. The first pivot was the right call. The second was harder. I paused the company after two years because I'd lost clarity on where we were heading, under pressure from voices I weighted too heavily. The market later moved in exactly the direction we'd originally identified.

I don't frame that as a failure story. I frame it as the project where I learned how product decisions actually get made under real pressure, with real money, and real people depending on the outcome. Every team I've led since has benefited from that. I design differently when I've had to defend a product direction with my own time and capital on the line, not just a stakeholder's deadline.