My role:
Design tools:
Figma
Deliverables:
Web app
Mobile app
Admin Back Office
Design Direction
Team:
Designers
Product owner
Software engineers
Duration:
3 months
Summary
Ké is a creative marketplace for showcasing and selling creative works and services. It is also a creative social platform that facilitates sharing, collaborations, and creative communities.
I helped Ké design a collaborative platform that enables creatives—especially digital creators—to put out their works, find clients, and collaborate with other talents. The team and I achieved this by creating familiar and user-friendly features, improving the payment process compared to other platforms, and streamlining the platform to meet the needs of creative circles and buyers. We simplified navigation and made intuitive interactive elements.
Users and Needs
Ké’s target users were creatives in a global space looking for a platform that allows them to share their creations, find clients/buyers for their products/services, and identify and grow their community. Some users have found contemporary creative marketplaces and existing social media platforms to foster competition rather than collaboration, which increased churn.
Our research showed that they valued intuitive interfaces and robust collaboration features. Equally, we found that the broadness of creative talents and forms of products and services these creatives and creators offer was a notable barrier. Creating an intuitive interface with great familiarity with existing social platforms where they already interact and creating collaboration features that allow them to find and nurture their tribe were vital to meeting their needs.
As a Product Designer on the project, I worked alongside 2 other designers to create the Ké platform—collaborating with the product owner and developers on several iterations and improvements to the product.
Individually, we had precise responsibilities—my principal role was to lead the design direction, create the component system, and design Ké’s web app & the admin back office.
I conducted limited user behavior research and competition analysis to identify user pain points, motives, patterns, and how existing products meet user needs. By identifying these factors, we were able to create a more user-friendly, intuitive, and enabling experience.
Solution and Key Features
To meet all product requirements, we designed a native mobile app and a web app with separate consoles for creatives and buyers; and a web-based admin back office. This decision would allow all types of users to have a uniquely immersive experience consistent with Ké’s value proposition. The key features include:
simplified onboarding and authentication process;
enhanced security;
clutter-free e-commerce experience for the marketplace;
unencumbered payment, wallet, and escrow system;
intuitive social features (feeds, sharing, ratings, and commenting);
user-tailored ad creation and analytics interface;
robust interface for community engagement and management;
direct messaging and intuitive customizations.
It was exciting and challenging working on this project. For a product with several working parts and features, we had to pay particular attention to avoid issues associated with feature creep—like complicating the user experience or users having difficulty finding functionalities. This pushed our creativity and tasked us to explore and employ everyday elements from our users’ app interactions.
The final product was inspiring—a culmination of the rewarding decisions we made and the bad ones we learned from. Regardless of the challenges, especially around bridging regional payment barriers and escrow needs of users, this project gave me a lot of opportunities for growth, innovation, and creativity. While this project was in a different industry, I got the chance to solve problems in digital finance.
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