Hype
Helping digital small businesses turn first impressions into revenue.
The Challenge
Content creators and small online businesses live and die by their ability to convert first impressions into lasting relationships—and ultimately, revenue. Hype had been building tools to help these entrepreneurs grow their audiences, but years of desktop-first development and incremental mobile optimization had created a fragmented experience that didn't match how creators actually work.
For over a year and a half, I led the design effort to fundamentally rethink Hype's product strategy, ultimately championing and designing a complete native mobile experience that put the most critical tools directly in creators' hands.
My Role
Senior Product Designer · Owned end-to-end design for Hype's native iOS application, from initial strategy through launch. Collaborated closely with the iOS architect and Director of Product to define information architecture, user flows, and the complete visual design system.
Design Process
The Strategic Shift
After observing how creators actually managed their businesses—often from their phones, between content shoots, or while traveling—I made a strong recommendation to leadership: stop optimizing our desktop experience for mobile, and build a true native app experience starting with iOS.
This wasn't just a technical decision. It was a fundamental shift in how we thought about our users' workflows. Creators don't sit at desks managing spreadsheets; they're constantly moving, constantly creating, and need tools that move with them.
Defining the Architecture
Working with the iOS architect and Director of Product, I mapped the complete information architecture for the native app. This involved auditing every feature in our existing products, understanding which capabilities were truly essential for mobile contexts, and identifying opportunities to create interactions that simply weren't possible on web.
The resulting architecture centered on three core jobs to be done: understanding your audience, engaging with them meaningfully, and converting that engagement into revenue.
Goal-Centered Dashboard
Rather than presenting creators with a wall of metrics, I designed the home dashboard around goals. What is the creator trying to achieve this week? This month? The interface surfaces the specific actions and insights that move those goals forward, reducing the cognitive load of figuring out "what should I do next?"
Unified Messaging Experience
One of the most complex design challenges was creating a messaging system that handled both intimate 1:1 conversations and mass communications to thousands of subscribers via SMS and email. I designed a unified interface that scales gracefully between these contexts, maintaining the feeling of personal connection even at scale.
Empty states became an opportunity for delight—I incorporated custom assets generated through Midjourney and DALL-E to create moments of personality that reinforce the Hype brand while guiding users toward their first actions.
Outcome
The native iOS app represented a fundamental evolution in how Hype serves creators. By meeting users where they actually work—on their phones, in the moments between creating content—we dramatically improved engagement and gave creators tools that feel as dynamic as their businesses.
