Heirloom

Context

Heirloom had strong initial interest but weak repeat usage. Interviews showed users felt advice was generic and mismatched to local growing conditions.

Constraints

• Limited historical user data by region.
• Small product and engineering team.
• Needed to preserve a simple onboarding flow.

Options Considered

1. Expand content library without personalization.
2. Introduce advanced planning tools for power users first.
3. Use lightweight region-aware recommendations for all users.

Chosen Approach

We prioritized region-aware guidance as the default experience. I scoped a simple climate-zone model, paired it with seasonal reminders, and sequenced rollout to validate retention impact before adding deeper tooling.

Outcomes

• Week-8 retention increased from 28% to 43%.
• Users completing first planting plan grew by 31%.
• Support tickets tied to “timing confusion” dropped by 22%.

What I'd Do Differently

I would validate climate-region assumptions with more qualitative sessions before rollout. We corrected a few recommendation edges post-launch that earlier interviews could have surfaced.