From organization to partnership
Tiffany Saricks had months of mental load research and a product idea: an operating system for couples. Compelling as a concept but abstract as a product, the challenge was to make it tangible.
Company
Huddle
Year
2026
Location
Chicago, IL
Engagement
Zero to Launch
Role
Brand Strategy
Visual Identity
Product Design
Web Design & Build
Strategy
Defining a new category
Every couple in Tiffany’s research was struggling with the same thing. One partner ran the household, and the other helped when asked.
The tools they’d tried hadn’t fixed it. Shared calendars and to-do lists made it easier to organise the work, but one person was still responsible for keeping everything running, and both of them ended up feeling frustrated and misunderstood.
But the tension wasn’t really about calendars or chores. For both partners, there was a deeper question underneath the logistics: who do I get to be in this family? One of them worried about losing her identity, while the other felt like he was constantly falling short. Even when everything was perfectly organised, they still didn’t feel like they were working as a team.
So that’s what we set out to build: a partnership system. A product designed around the relationship rather than the tasks, built for two people sharing a home.
PRODUCT DIRECTION
A weekly ritual as the product anchor
We knew that partnership was the right target. But partnership is a broad and abstract idea, so a product can’t deliver it directly. Our job was to turn it into something concrete that couples could actually practise. We ended up focusing on three mechanisms: ownership, reflection, and communication:
Domain Ownership. Most household tools are built around assigning tasks. Huddle is organised around ownership instead. Each partner takes responsibility for entire domains, such as Meals or Finance, including the planning, decisions, and invisible work underneath. When someone fully owns a domain, they have the freedom to make decisions, and their partner can genuinely let go of that part of the mental load.
Personal check-ins. Each week, both partners take a moment to check in with themselves. They review the week ahead, assess their capacity, and flag anything they want to discuss together. The goal is to surface concerns early, before they build into frustration or conflict.
The Weekly Huddle. The Huddle is the centre of the product: a structured weekly conversation designed to be done together. Both partners come in having already reflected on the week ahead and identified what they want to discuss. They review their plans, work through those topics together, and make a handful of decisions. During the week, they can return to the product to revisit those decisions and stay aligned.
BRAND IDENTITY
Warmth with weight
Through a workshop with Tiffany, we arrived at an important constraint for the brand: couples were coming to Huddle with something already weighing on them, and the brand needed to acknoledge that without becoming heavy itself. The challenge was balancing warmth and optimism with enough weight to be taken as a serious solution.
The Puzzle Pieces
The identity is built around a system of pieces, each representing a different household domain with its own shape, colour, and weight. Before a personal check-in, they’re scattered. Afterwards, they’re organised but separate. When the Huddle happens, they come together. That moment becomes the Huddle symbol. The wordmark follows the same idea. Its imperfect letterforms lean into and support one another, reinforcing the sense of partnership at the heart of the product.
Typography
We chose Henrietta by Very Cool Studio as the headline typeface. It’s a soft, friendly serif that brings a sense of weight without feeling formal. It’s paired with General Sans by Indian Type Foundry, a flexible sans-serif that works across both the product and marketing materials.
Art Direction
The photography focuses on the reality of a lived-in home rather than an idealised one. Toys are left out, laundry appears in the background. Things aren’t always tidy. When we show household chores, people are always out of frame. When we show people, they’re away from domestic tasks. The intention is simple: to picture what Huddle gives back. Space to be more than the work that keeps a household running.
LAUNCH & MARKETING
Marketing while building
Huddle started from Tiffany’s conviction. She’d done the research and believed in what she was building. But she also wanted to know whether it would work for real couples. That’s why we launched it as an MVP: opening it to a small group first, learning from their experience, and improving it from there.
That meant the website had a specific job to do. It needed to make clear that Huddle wasn’t another shared calendar or task manager, while being honest about the commitment it asks from both partners. Most importantly, it needed to make people feel understood. By the time couples arrive, they’ve often tried other solutions and been disappointed by them.
Huddle launched as an MVP in May 2026. The website is live and the first couples are using it. There’s a letter from Tiffany at the end of the page: a personal note about why she made Huddle and a request for real couples to help her figure out what’s working.
For now, the goal isn’t growth. It’s learning whether the system actually helps couples feel more like a team, and whether it helps them answer the question that inspired the product in the first place: who do I get to be in this family?
Huddle is live at letshuddle.co
PROJECT CREDITS
Tiffany Saricks - Founder. Concept, Research, Product Management, Marketing
Israel Alonso - Strategy, Brand Identity, Product Design, Website Design, Marketing
Brad Dunbar - Software Engineering