Narrativ — UX/UI for project with $150M+ revenue
Product Design
2025
Responsibilities
Product Research, Prototyping, UX/UI, Design System
Duration
4 Months
Context
Narrativ is a Web3-native platform helping blockchain projects run transparent and effective KOL fundraising campaigns. With a proven track record ($1B+ raised, $150M+ revenue), Narrativ needed a UX/UI design overhaul to support fundraising efforts and productize its managed service. I led the design of a scalable web app experience—centered around a KOL marketplace, campaign reporting, and AI-driven deal analysis—tailored to institutional investors, crypto projects, and KOLs.
Problem
Narrativ’s MVP relied heavily on Airtable for managing complex KOL campaigns, deal tracking, and performance metrics. While functional in the early stage, this setup quickly became a bottleneck. It lacked scalability, clarity, and a cohesive user experience—especially as operations grew across hundreds of clients and thousands of KOLs. Narrativ needed a purpose-built web application to scale its offering, automate operations, and present itself as a credible, productized service in a competitive landscape.
Goal
The goal was to design a scalable, data-driven platform that replaces Airtable and enables seamless management, analysis, and collaboration across KOL campaigns for investors, projects, and influencers.
Results:
Narrativ originally operated using Airtable as a lightweight MVP to manage KOL campaigns and data. While this allowed for quick iteration in the early stages, it lacked the scalability, structure, and user experience needed to support a growing client base and complex workflows.
With no pre-existing product UI, I was tasked with designing the entire platform experience from the ground up. To reduce risk and ensure completeness, I started by mapping detailed user flows for every key scenario—capturing all entities, relationships, and data operations essential to the product’s logic.
From day one, we established a weekly feedback loop with Narrativ’s team to maintain transparency and alignment. These structured check-ins helped us validate decisions early, catch misunderstandings before they escalated, and minimize rework in later stages of the project.
Once user flows and features were defined, I moved into wireframing and prototyping. We focused on building high-fidelity prototypes for core user journeys, enabling the client to interact with the product early and provide actionable feedback before UI development began.
With a tight timeline in place, I adopted a Tailwind-based component system to accelerate delivery. Every element was carefully customized and extended to support Narrativ’s complex needs—ensuring the UI remained both functional and visually cohesive with the brand.
Narrativ’s core use case involves managing hundreds of KOLs simultaneously across multiple campaigns. This required a highly intuitive UI that minimizes user error, highlights real-time insights, and offers a clear, actionable view of performance data and trends.
Even while working within a modular component library, I prioritized embedding Narrativ’s branding into every layer of the interface. The goal was to make the product instantly recognizable—not just by its functionality, but by a visual language that reflects its credibility and modernity.
Given the nature of Narrativ’s users—professional campaign managers and project leads—we made a strategic decision to build a desktop-only platform. This allowed us to optimize for complexity, data density, and performance without diluting the experience for mobile constraints.
Outcome
Delivered high-fidelity Figma designs and a comprehensive design system with custom UI components, providing Narrativ with a scalable and flexible product for future growth.
Integrated over 10 new workflows, allowing the team to maintain Airtable’s data advantages while expanding functionality. This expansion helped double the user base and differentiate the app from all competitors.
Turned Narrativ into the only on-chain KOL management tool with high customization, including the ability to edit hundreds of KOL entries at once, enabling real-time reactions from KOLs—a feature unmatched by competitors.
One of the key early challenges was aligning the client’s evolving understanding of the product. Initially, they were unclear on the full scope of features, which led to confusion about priorities. To resolve this, I created a comprehensive feature list outlining all planned features for the next two years. This helped the client see the full vision and allowed us to better manage expectations and future iterations. Later, client-requested UI changes required balancing aesthetics and functionality, which I worked through with the engineering team to meet both visual and technical goals.
This project taught me the value of flexibility and iterative problem-solving. Adjusting the data structure early on was critical for long-term success, and managing shifting requirements strengthened my ability to make quick decisions under pressure. Ultimately, the experience honed my skills in delivering scalable, high-quality products within tight deadlines.