Ollio

Connect, Collaborate, Create: Sponsorships Simplified for Brands & Creators

Ollio is a web-based platform that connects independent creators with brands seeking authentic partnerships. Designed for both sides of the collaboration, Ollio offers structured deal flows, creator discovery tools, and a transparent payment system. Whether you're a brand looking to build influence or a creator navigating your next opportunity, Ollio simplifies sponsorships—making them easier to find, negotiate, and manage.
DIVIIDI
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• Project Type: Freelance UX Design
• Team: Project Manager, 3 Software Engineer, 2 Designers
• Duration: 5 Months
• Tools: Figma, Adobe Illustrator

01 My Role

As the UX designer on this freelance project for a startup, I collaborated closely with a product manager and software engineer to bring Ollio to life. This was a first-time product launch, so I was responsible for designing the user experience from the ground up—starting with research, user flows, and building the design system, and moving into high-fidelity prototyping. I translated user needs into actionable design solutions, ensuring that the platform was intuitive, scalable, and built to support clear, structured sponsorships between brands and creators.

02 Product Glimpse

Here is a brief overview of the final website for Ollio:

03 Process

At each step, while following the double diamond design process, I worked to identify clear goals and frame my design decisions based on user needs, team feedback, and continuous iteration. The process moved from research and ideation to prototyping and delivery—ensuring that every feature was grounded in both strategic insight and real user behavior.

04 Who is it for?

Ollio is designed for two core user groups navigating the modern sponsorship economy: brand representatives and independent creators. Both face distinct yet overlapping challenges in finding reliable, aligned partnerships that lead to meaningful collaboration.

– Learning about audience

Today’s creator economy is driven by authenticity, but most brand-creator deals happen through DMs, email chains, or agencies—channels that lack structure. Ollio addresses this by offering a centralized platform tailored to each user’s workflow.

From early user research:

– Recognizing the need

Ollio provides creators with streamlined, transparent deal flows and brands with detailed discovery tools. The platform removes guesswork and friction—replacing it with a clear, reliable process from discovery to payment.

05 Problem

By bringing structure and transparency to the fragmented sponsorship space, Ollio empowers both creators and brands to connect, negotiate, and collaborate with confidence. The platform addresses several key pain points in the creator economy:

– Brand Problem

Discovery Difficulty
Brands often struggle to identify creators who truly align with their campaign goals—making outreach feel like guesswork and reducing the chances of meaningful partnerships.
Messy Deliverable Tracking
As campaigns scale, brands lack centralized tools to monitor whether creators have fulfilled their commitments—resulting in missed deadlines, duplicated efforts, or gaps in performance reporting.
Unstructured Negotiation
Without a clear framework for deal-making, negotiating deliverables, timelines, and pricing becomes time-consuming and inconsistent—leading to miscommunication and delays.

– Creator Problem

Unclear Progress Visibility
Creators have no easy way to see where they stand in a sponsorship deal—whether a brand has reviewed their proposal, approved content, or completed payment—making it hard to stay organized or plan ahead.
Lack of Clarity

Key details like deliverables, deadlines, and content expectations are often vague or buried in emails—leading to confusion and inconsistent execution.
Payment Uncertainty
Without a structured system, creators often don’t know when—or if—they’ll be paid. Tracking invoices and following up with brands manually creates unnecessary stress and delays.

06 Research

So what do creators and brands think? Before designing Ollio, I prioritized understanding the sponsorship experience from both sides. To uncover frustrations and design opportunities, I conducted a mix of primary interviews and survey research with over 30 users—targeting creators, marketers, and brand managers.

– Asking the right questions

Here is a list of questions I formulated to develop a comprehensive understanding of the current sponsorship experience, user expectations, feature needs, and overall usability of Ollio:

How do you currently find and manage brand/creator sponsorships?
What’s the most frustrating part of negotiating deals?
Have you ever experienced miscommunication or delayed payments?
What tools or platforms do you currently use to manage sponsorships?
What would make the sponsorship process feel more transparent and trustworthy?
If you could automate one part of the process, what would it be?

– User interview results

From a total of 5 interviews with both creators and brand representatives, I uncovered a range of behavioral and attitudinal insights that validated the core problems Ollio is designed to solve—fragmentation, unclear communication, and lack of trust infrastructure.

“Everything is just emails and spreadsheets. There’s no central place to manage it.”
— Jade, Marketing Manager
“I’ve had brands ghost me after a deal. I didn’t even know if I was supposed to post or not.”
— Tyler, Independent Creator
“We need a way to track who’s delivered, who’s still pending, and who’s overdue. Right now it’s all manual.”
— Chris, Brand Strategist
“I don’t mind negotiating, but I want to see all the terms clearly. I’ve had payments get delayed way too often.”
— Monica, Lifestyle Creator

– Themes Identified

These conversations uncovered themes that extended beyond the initial scope, offering deeper insights into user needs and concerns.

Fragmented Communication Systems
Without a centralized platform, teams rely on scattered tools—causing disorganization, missed updates, and inefficiencies across sponsorship management.
Mismatched Expectations
Lack of clear deliverable agreements and ongoing communication leads to confusion, missed posts, and broken collaboration flow.
Lack of Workflow Visibility
Manual tracking methods make it difficult to monitor deal status, increasing the risk of missed deadlines and incomplete sponsorships.
Lack of Trust Infrastructure
Missing payment security and unclear contract terms create friction, uncertainty, and distrust between creators and brands.

07 Ideation & Analysis

To make sponsorships more structured and scalable, I refined ideas based on deal fragmentation, communication gaps, and trust issues—prioritizing features that promote clarity, accountability, and efficiency for both creators and brands.

– User Persona

– Converging on my ideas

After exploring a range of feature ideas, I focused on refining those that directly addressed key challenges: communication gaps, lack of transparency, and fragmented deal flow.

These features emerged as core solutions:

Centralized Discovery Dashboard
Instead of scattered outreach, brands can now search and filter verified creators in one place—making discovery faster, smarter, and more organized.
Brand
Sponsorship Management Hub
Instead of juggling spreadsheets and emails, brands get one dashboard to manage all sponsorships—boosting visibility, reducing delays, and keeping everything organized.
Brand
Structured Negotiation Flow

Negotiations are now streamlined in one place—brands can propose, revise, and confirm deal terms with clear deliverables, pricing, and timelines.
Brand
Organized Sponsorship Requests
Creators can now manage deals through a clean, organized inbox with filters and status tags—making it easy to track progress and prioritize tasks.
Creator
Deal Summary Overview
Each sponsorship includes a summary page with clear deliverables, timelines, and payment terms—keeping creators aligned, informed and on track.
Creator
Payment Request System
Creators can send contract-backed payment requests through the platform, with real-time status updates to reduce delays and ensure transparency.
Creator

08 Product Structure

To support the unique needs of both brands and creators, I developed two parallel app structures—each tailored to the specific workflows, goals, and responsibilities of its user.

– Brand Side

The brand-side design streamlines discovery, negotiation, and campaign tracking through tools like Creator Discovery, Sponsorship Overview, and Negotiation Manager—removing the need for spreadsheets and scattered emails.

– Creator Side

The creator-side experience focuses on clarity and control—making it easy to manage requests, negotiate deals, and track payments through a structured inbox and built-in tools, without relying on scattered DMs or unclear terms.

09 Low-Fidelity Ideation

At this stage, I created simple wireframes to visualize the user flows and interaction patterns for both the brand and creator experiences. My focus was on mapping out core features like creator discovery, sponsorship request handling, and the payment tracking system.

– Brand Side

The brand side prioritized a dashboard for finding sponsorship opportunities, tracking sponsorships, and making negotiations.

– Creator Side

The creator side featured a payment handling system and structured sponsorship interface. Key flows were kept minimal to reduce friction in first-time use.

10 Testing and Revision

After finalizing low-fidelity revisions, I conducted user testing sessions with both brand representatives and creators to evaluate how intuitive and effective the new flow was. Testing was done using clickable prototypes and scenario-based tasks.

– Problems Arise

During testing sessions, a core usability concern surfaced: creators were unsure how to prioritize their sponsorship requests because there was no visual indicator of deal stage or urgency.

"I wasn't sure which deal needed my attention first—it all kind of blends together."

To solve this, I explored two approaches:

Option A
Add colored labels and status icons to each message—such as "Pending," "Active," or "Completed"—allowing creators to skim and act quickly.
Option B
Restructure the nav bar into sortable pages (e.g., Upcoming Sponsorship / In-Progress Sponsorship) to segment sponsorships based on their progress.

– Low-Fidelity Revision

I opted for Option B to minimize cognitive load and keep the sponsorship request experience focused. This also made it easier to align the layout with platform-wide UI standards.

11 Brand Final Designs

I created high-fidelity prototypes for the brand-side experience and tested them using scenario-based tasks. The designs focused on streamlining creator discovery, sponsorship tracking, and deal management in an intuitive, scalable interface.

– Discovery Dashboard

Brands can now browse and filter verified creators through a unified, searchable platform—replacing fragmented outreach with a faster, smarter discovery process.

– Sponsorship Management

Brands now manage all active, pending, and completed sponsorships through a centralized dashboard—improving visibility, reducing missed deadlines, and keeping teams organized at scale.

– Negotiations

Brands can propose, revise, and finalize deal terms within a dedicated interface, ensuring clarity on deliverables, pricing, and timelines while reducing miscommunication.

12 Creator Final Designs

I designed and tested high-fidelity screens for the creator-side experience, focusing on clarity, control, and ease of use. From managing incoming requests to transactions, the flow was built to simplify sponsorships and reduce friction at every step.

– Sponsorship Requests

Creators can manage sponsorships through a clear inbox with filters and status indicators, making it easy to organize deals, track progress, and prioritize next steps.

– Deal Overview

Every sponsorship now comes with a dedicated summary page outlining expectations—deliverables, timelines, and payment terms. This helps creators stay aligned with brands and ensures nothing gets lost in translation.

– Transactions

Creators can send structured, contract-backed payment requests through the platform, ensuring visibility into payment status and reducing financial uncertainty.

13 Reflection

This was my first B2B UX project focused on independent creator sponsorships. I designed the interfaces for both creators and brand representatives, ensuring a seamless experience across desktop and mobile. The complexity of structuring a multi-step sponsorship process, integrating payment workflows, and balancing the needs of both creators and brands made this project a challenging yet valuable learning experience.

One of the biggest challenges was understanding the sponsorship industry from both perspectives. Unlike traditional freelance or e-commerce platforms, the creator-brand sponsorship model operates with negotiation-based deals, fluctuating deliverables, and non-standardized payment agreements. I leveraged user research, competitor analysis, and journey mapping to build a system that simplifies sponsorship negotiations while maintaining flexibility for both parties. Additionally, my role expanded beyond initial expectations—I was originally focused on designing sponsorship request flows, but later took on negotiation management, payment processing, and creator outreach features.

User testing was another critical learning experience. No matter how refined a design is, real-world testing always reveals unexpected user challenges. By conducting multiple rounds of testing, I identified areas where clarity, navigation, and process efficiency could be improved. Moving forward, I plan to continue refining the platform, integrating more user feedback, and ensuring that this product becomes one of the most effective tools for sponsorship collaboration in the creator economy.