SquadTrail: Designing a collaboration platform for agencies and lean teams

SquadTrail is a lean collaboration platform built for small-to-mid agencies and agile startups.

💡 Background

Remote agencies and small startups need structure but not complexity. Existing tools such as ClickUp, Asana, Slack, Teams either force teams to hop between apps or provide feature-rich interfaces that overwhelm lean teams and workflows.

🎨 My Role

I designed SquadTrail solo. From research to UX/UI prototypes, I created a lean collaboration platform featuring direct messaging, activity feed, simplified task manager, and automation integrations—all aimed at helping teams stay aligned and work smarter.

Understanding the context

Managing feedback loops and ensuring clear, collaborative communication are some challenges that are mostly peculiar to smaller teams or agencies.

I conducted generative research to understand the lives and habits of our core users, both as individuals and collectively as a team. The research featured participants from freelancers to marketing agencies and I got some quite interesting insights

The insights gathered from the user research prompted me to reframe the problem. This further enabled me to transform the problem into actionable areas for innovation utilizing trends we discovered from our analysis.

How might we streamline communication and collaboration across teams to reduce the need for multiple tools and enhance overall efficiency?
How might we ensure that agile team members receive timely updates and feedback to prevent delays and maintain alignment throughout the project lifecycle?
How might we simplify the decision-making process for agile teams by improving access to key information and facilitating real-time collaboration?

What do the other players do better?

I decided to benchmark products and tools our users are already not just familiar with but very comfortable when using them. This was crucial in shaping the software and user experience to ensure that we deliver a solution that addresses market gaps.

After analyzing the data compiled, I sorted them into most common processes in team operations – project management, file management, feedback, conversations and manual routines.

The collaborative tool for agile agencies

Squadtrail helps teams cut through the chaos by bringing all their communication and project tools into one place. No more juggling between apps or missing key updates. With everything streamlined, teams can stay on the same page, make quick decisions, and deliver top-quality results that customers love—faster and smarter

Ensuring task clarity: assign, track, and get approval with ease

No more constantly chasing updates, waiting for approvals or struggling to stay on top of what needs to be done, Squadtrail allows team members to easily track and manage tasks as well as get approvals. This means smoother workflows, faster decisions, and keeping everyone on the same page.

Reducing recurring tasks with automations

Users can create triggers that perform routine actions automatically such as sending follow-up emails, exporting customer leads to their favourite CRM or even create pages automatically on Notion. This reduces the time and effort spent on these recurring tasks, allowing team members to focus on higher-value activities and enhancing overall productivity.

Personal one-on-one chats to Keep Everyone in Sync

No more missed updates and inefficiencies due to scattered communication channels. With Squadtrail inbox, teams now stay aligned, in-sync and fully informed

Effortlessly manage and track projects at any stage

Managing projects and products can be sometimes complex. Squadtrail offers multiple project management tools such as notes for collaborative ideation and brand documents, project goals and objectives and track project tasks

Create group chats for every topic

Whether it’s brainstorming a particular project or planning a company picnic, Squadtrail allows users to organize conversations by creating groups

Key lessons

Simplicity in Complexity: designing a feature-rich platform like Squadtrail required distilling complex workflows and routines into simple, user-friendly interfaces. Iterating based on user feedback was critical in ensuring the platform’s usability
Adapting to User Behavior in Remote Work: As remote work habits evolved, we learned that users needed flexibility, not rigid tools. By offering seamless integrations, we allowed users to adapt Squadtrail to their unique workflows, enhancing productivity without disrupting their established routines

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Ifeanyi Achi