Ollio

Role

Product designer

Team

1 Product Manager, 5 Developers, 1 Designer

Timeline

May 2024 - Aug 2024

Skills

Product design, interface design, interaction design

Context

Ollio is a startup that wants to create a platform that serve brands and creators to easily manage sponsorship deals.

Problem

Brands and creators rely on scattered email threads, shared docs, and inconsistent communication to manage sponsorship deals, making the process time-consuming and unorganized.

Ollio needs a platform that simplifies creating sponsorship proposals for brands and managing deals for creators.

Solution

For brands

Manage sponsorships in a familiar spreadsheet view and streamline deal creation with reusable templates.

Ollio proposals dashboard showing a table of sponsorship deals with campaign, creator, timeline, budget, and status columns

For creators

Review proposals in a mobile-friendly layout and respond quickly with built-in reply options.

Ollio mobile proposal view showing deliverables, creative guidelines, and quick accept/reject actions

User Interviews

I conducted interviews with 2 brand managers and 3 creators to understand the current workflow and pain points.

Through these conversations, I uncovered key behavioral patterns that contribute to the time-consuming, fragmented nature of dealmaking.

For Brands

For Creators

Ideation Workshop

I translated the pain points and goals we uncovered into How Might We prompts to guide the ideation process.

Brands

How might we help brands reuse past proposals and ensure they aren't missing critical information?

Creators

How might we make it easier for creators to review and respond to proposals?

To turn insights into features, I led an ideation session with my PM and two engineers.

We ran a modified Crazy 8s to sketch ideas, then prioritized them using an impact-effort matrix, laying the groundwork for key solutions on both the brand and creator sides.

Crazy Eights sketches by four participants generating feature ideas for reusing past proposals, followed by an impact-effort matrix prioritizing the ideas

Brand Design

Start from template

Placing a “Start from Template” button next to “New Proposal” gives brands quick access to their most recently used deal format so they don't have to start from scratch.

Status at a glance

Teams relied on memory or messy spreadsheets to track deal progress. We introduced a color-coded status tag for each card.

Proposal card for @beautybylana with a yellow Pending status tag

Proposal card for @benthecook with a green Accepted status tag

Dynamic checklist

We added a real-time checklist to the proposal form that updates as each section is filled out. This prevents small oversights from turning into bigger issues.

Creator Design

Clearer terms up front

We surfaced the most important information at the top of the section in large type to help creators understand expectations at a glance.

Visual status tracking

We designed a tabbed inbox with clear categories, keeping everything organized and visible in one place.

Ollio proposals inbox with tabbed categories for Incoming, Pending Edits, and Accepted proposals

One tap responses

We added fixed action buttons anchored at the bottom of the proposal screen for creators to make quick actions.

Ollio fixed action bar with Decline, Request Edit, and Accept buttons anchored at the bottom of the screen

User Testing

I conducted user testing sessions with 2 brand managers and 2 creators to validate key workflows before implementation.

Iteration

Card layout to table view

The card layout was too space-consuming for busy brand teams. Marketers had to scroll extensively or search manually to track deals. The new table view with a compact, column-based layout allowing brands to scan quickly, all in one place.

Before and after comparison of the Ollio proposal view: a single full-page card for one proposal versus a compact table listing all proposals with campaign, creator, timeline, budget, and status columns

Bubble-style tabs to line-style tabs

The bubble-style tabs felt like filters, not a progress flow. So we switched to line-style tabs to show each tabs are part of a sequence. Line-style tabs gave creators a clearer sense of progression and helps reduce confusion around next steps.

Before and after comparison of the Ollio Proposals tab navigation: rounded bubble-style tabs versus line-style underlined tabs for Incoming, Pending Edits, and Accepted

Feedback

Jong Kim

Ollio Chief Executive Officer

“We were juggling scattered feedback from creators about unclear deliverables, missing status updates, and friction in accepting deals. Lena took all of that and turned it into a cohesive, actionable experience. What she came up with wasn’t just pretty interfaces, but she led user interviews, uncovered real behavioral patterns, and translated them into intuitive workflows. Her work on the proposal cards and inbox structure made decision-making feel fast and natural. Creators now have a tool that actually reflects the way they think and work. Her ability to blend systems thinking with real user empathy made a huge impact on our product direction and our users are noticing the difference.”

Reflection

Learnings

Overall, I’m proud of how I identified key workflow pain points and delivered solutions that simplified decision-making on both the brand and creator sides. If I were to revisit this project, I would be more mindful to:

Matching visual patterns to mental models

I realized how important it is to choose interaction patterns that not only look good, but align with how users naturally think about their workflow. Even subtle design choices can either reinforce or disrupt a user’s understanding of a process.

Designing for scale, not just clarity

Some design choices felt clean and intuitive at first, but didn’t hold up when used at scale. I’ve learned to think beyond visual simplicity and consider how layouts perform when there’s more data, more users, and more complexity.