The issue tracker built for fast-moving team
Client
Pulse
Year
2026
Pulse is a concept project management SaaS built for engineering teams who've outgrown tools that demand more upkeep than they save. Styled after Linear's dark, minimal interface language, it's built around one specific frustration: tools that require heavy setup and manual busywork instead of just staying out of the way.
Scope of Work
Designing for someone who doesn't want to manage the tool
Jordan R., 32, an engineering team lead in Austin, spent hours manually reorganizing Jira tickets each week. His frustration wasn’t planning itself, but software that made it harder — heavy setup, untriaged issues, and slow ticket management. He needed a simpler tool with instant visibility into his team’s workload.
Designing for someone who doesn't want to manage the tool
Jordan R., 32, an engineering team lead in Austin, spent hours each week manually reorganizing Jira tickets. His frustration wasn’t planning itself, but software that made it harder than necessary — heavy setup, untriaged issues, and slow ticket management. He needed a simpler tool with instant visibility into his team’s workload.
Finding where the friction actually lives
The empathy map revealed Jordan’s core frustrations: bloated tools, lengthy setup, and unnecessary complexity. His journey highlighted where these needed to be addressed — proving value quickly, focusing pricing on outcomes, and making setup effortless. Most importantly, the core workflow had to work in real use, not just look impressive in a demo.
Testing the weekly flow before it had a visual layer
Before any dark-mode styling was applied, the core paths — the landing page structure, the triage queue, and the cycle/burndown view — were blocked out as wireframes. Given that the journey map flagged the core weekly flow as the thing that actually had to hold up under real use, getting that structure right before styling was the priority, not an afterthought.
A dark, restrained system built like a tool
Typography uses Geist for headings and Inter for body/UI text, creating a technical, precise feel. The dark palette stays restrained with near-black backgrounds and muted greys, while indigo/purple highlights primary actions and green is reserved for success and performance metrics.
The hero has seconds to earn attention
The headline states the outcome directly — "The issue tracker built for fast-moving teams," followed by a trust bar of recognizable companies (Vercel, Linear, Google, Figma, Anthropic). This answers Jordan's "does this actually solve my planning problem" skepticism before he has to scroll further.
Every feature is framed as a result, not a capability
Sections like "Know how your team is really doing" lead with the outcome (cycle velocity, scope creep, throughput trends) before listing what enables it. This directly answers the Compare-stage finding that feature sections needed to prove value, not just describe functionality.
