How I went from designing products to designing memberships

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards." – Steve Jobs

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A mentor shared this quote with me just before I graduated, when I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. At the time, I thought I’d become an architect. I studied architecture, did an internship and discovered that while I loved the history of architecture and understanding the built environment, I wasn’t actually interested in practicing as an architect.

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That realization led me to take a sabbatical. During that break, I started a company called Runnovate, which at the time was a platform connecting Kenyan virtual assistants with global clients. Running Runnovate opened up a whole new world for me. It was my first time building a website, my first time thinking deeply about user problems, and my first time experimenting with digital products. That’s how I stumbled into User Experience (UX) Design, a career I would never have considered if I hadn’t taken that detour.

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After college, I worked in UX and web design, but another turning point came when I joined Dreamers & Doers, a company that supports women entrepreneurs. I joined mostly because I wanted to be around other entrepreneurs who inspired me, and I ended up taking on a role supporting membership operations. Looking back, it wasn’t entirely new territory. With Runnovate, I had already built a community of over 100 virtual assistants. I knew what it was like to bring people together, to create systems that supported them and to manage the behind-the-scenes work.

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That experience made me realize something important: memberships work a lot like products. The same principles that make digital products stick such as simplicity, consistency, accessibility, feedback, and delight are the very principles that make memberships thrive.

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Before I go further, a quick note on definitions. Since this publication is called Membership Experience, I’ll be talking mostly about memberships. A membership is a subscription to be part of something, for example a gym, an online program or even Costco, or. A community, on the other hand, is simply a gathering of people, whether online or in person. Community can be one benefit of a membership, but not all memberships include communities. In this and the upcoming articles, I’ll focus primarily on memberships that do have a community element, while occasionally touching on other membership models too.

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All of this, from my detour from architecture, to Runnovate, to UX Design, to membership operations, brought me here. I created Membership Experience Design (you’ll also see me use Membership UX as shorthand) because I believe the lessons of UX design don’t just belong to products. They can and should shape the way we design memberships, making them a delight for members and a joy to run for creators.

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In the coming articles, I’ll break down specific UX principles and show you how they apply directly to memberships. My hope is that these lessons will help you build programs people love to join, stay in and grow with.

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But before we get into the UX principles and laws, it’s important to make sure we’re on the same page. Memberships, communities, group programs, subscriptions… People often use these terms interchangeably, but they’re not always the same thing. In the next article, I’ll break down the key definitions we’ll be using throughout this series so that you have total clarity before we go deeper.

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If you’re building or running a membership and want hands-on help, I also support clients with membership strategy, operations, and management and you can reach out to me here. But whether you do it yourself or work with me, I’ll be sharing everything I’ve learned here so you can apply it to your own membership.

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