YEAR
2022 – 2023
INDUSTRY
Travel / Creator Economy
ROLE
Lead Product Designer
SCOPE OF WORK
Product, Brand, Design Systems, Leadership
TEAM
Solo designer, PM, CTO and CEO, dev team
LIVE LINK
Hotel booking product and a creator storefront
About this project
A travel startup based in Tel Aviv with an unusual two-sided model: hotel deals on one side, creator-driven referrals on the other. Influencers built storefronts, travellers booked through them, everyone got a cut. I joined as one of the first ~8 employees and operated as design lead as the company grew to ~15.
The MVP launch was the first proof point. The product had to feel like one thing to two very different audiences — travellers want trust and savings, creators want earnings and ease of use — without splitting the brand in half.
Design ran in parallel with everything else: hiring, go-to-market, founder calls, product positioning. There was no “design phase” — there were a few months of shipping, a launch, and then everything got harder.
Overview
Lead Product Designer for the MVP launch of a hotel deals platform with a built-in creator referral system. Designed for both travellers and the influencers selling to them.
Context
Zero-to-one, two audiences, one MVP. Joined as one of the first ~8 employees and operated as design lead through growth to ~15. Brand, product, and go-to-market decisions happening in the same week.
My role
Owned product design across both surfaces — traveller booking and creator storefront. Set the design system, designed the MVP flows end-to-end, contributed to hiring and design team management as the company scaled.
Key decisions
One visual system across both surfaces so traveller and creator products felt like siblings, not strangers. A traveller flow that leads with savings (“$300 off — compared to other sites”) because price is the only reason anyone leaves Booking.com. A creator onboarding flow built around the three verbs that matter to them: Create, Share, Earn — 5–10% commission, monthly, no fine print.
Outcome
Shipped MVP. Design system adopted across the full team. Foundation the product iterated on after launch.
What I’d do differently
Validate the creator economics with five real influencers before designing the dashboard. We built for a creator persona that turned out to be slightly different from the one that actually signed up.