Background and Context
Opportunity
Following Later’s acquisition of Mavely, we saw an opportunity to envision a deeply integrated marketer experience—connecting creators, content, engagement, and conversion into a single ecosystem.
With an upcoming executive board meeting, we created a forward-looking product vision to demonstrate how AI, ML, and shared data between the two products—Later Influence and Mavely, could unlock a more powerful, end-to-end marketer workflow. This vision was unveiled at a leadership summit in Boston.
This was the first opportunity to showcase a truly unified vision between Later and Mavely—leveraging creator data, social performance, and purchase signals to enable smarter creator discovery, campaign planning, and measures of success.
Personas
- Brand Marketers: Professionals managing social campaigns to drive awareness, engagement, and revenue across platforms
- Content Creators: Independent content producers monetizing through affiliate links and brand sponsorships
Why did we pursue this?
Our research highlighted consistent marketer pain points:
- Discovery: Finding creators who drive predictable results
- Scale: Managing creator programs efficiently
- Friction: Inefficient, fragmented workflows
- Measurement: Difficulty proving creator ROI
While Later Influence addressed parts of this, technical and UX constraints limited progress. With executive buy-in, we explored a brand-new product vision designed to eventually replace the existing product experience.
Vision and Strategy
The new marketer experience was envisioned as:
- Frictionless: Automated, AI- and ML-supported workflows
- Marketplace-driven: Efficiently matching brands and creators
- Collaborative: Designed for shared value creation
- Outcome-focused: Precision targeting and performance prediction
To execute this new vision, I:
- Partnered with the CGO to translate a narrative into clear jobs-to-be-done
- Coordinated closely with Mavely’s Head of UX to align marketer and creator experiences
- Facilitated design workshops and critique sessions with product designers
- Explored a new visual direction to signal innovation and future state
The success of this project would be determined by board member alignment and excitement around a unified product direction.
Process and Constraints
My Role and Focus
- Led research synthesis, UX vision, journey mapping, and design direction
- Drove alignment across product, engineering, and leadership
- Defined success metrics and supported execution planning
Challenges and Tradeoffs
- 7-day timeline to deliver vision at executive board meeting
- Vision-level, mid-fidelity designs
- Leveraged known patterns—no new research during this phase
- Designed as a “north star,” not final production UX
Discovery and Research
- Drew inspiration from leading tools (ChatGPT, Netflix, HubSpot, social media competitors)
- Anchored concepts in two personas: brand marketer and content creator
- Focused on personalization, intelligence, and clarity at scale
Key Features to Highlight
- Brand onboarding: Auto-generated insights from social and shop data
- Creator discovery: ROI-based recommendations with ML-driven predictions
- AI-assisted campaigns: Natural language prompts and smart defaults
- Campaign planning: Timeline-based planning with budget and goal visibility
- Performance forecasting: Predictive outcomes before launch
- Brand safety: Automated risk analysis on content and audiences
- Modular reporting: Customizable dashboards with exportable formats
Outcome and Impact
Design Impact
- Intelligent creator matching and campaign setup
- Embedded AI to reduce friction and manual effort
- Predictive performance and modular reporting
- End-to-end transparency from creator to conversion
Business Impact
- Strong executive and board endorsement
- Increased organizational confidence in the unified product vision
- Clear momentum toward building the new marketer experience
Team Growth
- Inspired designers through high-visibility, blue-sky thinking
- Strengthened cross-company UX leadership collaboration
- Created shared excitement for the year ahead