VisionType I
Designed in under a week for a presentation to Bill Gates. Three sides of the same product — creator, brand, and the connection between them.
This wasn't a normal sprint. BENlabs was preparing a product vision to present to Bill Gates. I had roughly a week to design VisionType I — a platform connecting creators, brands, and the intelligence layer between them. The designs used an existing design system (not custom), but the thinking had to be sharp: every screen needed to tell a story about three-sided value.
Below is a working recreation of VisionType — 21 steps across three acts. Click the pulsing elements inside the prototype, use Next, or your ← → keys. Short on time? The gold marks in the step bar jump straight to the five key moments.
Meet Andrew Stonehocker
Andrew rejects 95% of brand deals because they don't fit his audience — and he can't grow without them. He was synthesized from creator interviews and competitive analysis of the creator economy; every screen that follows traces back to his workflow.
Meet Andrew Stonehocker
UX Designer by day, YouTube creator by night
Creates cross-platform content, repurposing YouTube videos for TikTok and Instagram. Leads a small design team at a tech startup.
I want to grow my channel's income to the point where I can hire a video editor — but I reject 95% of brand deals because they're not relevant to my audience.
Why Three Sides
Most creator platforms optimize for one side. YouTube serves creators. Brand platforms serve marketers. The intelligence stays siloed — and both sides leave value on the table.
VisionType's premise was that audience data is the connective tissue. A creator's audience intelligence tells them what content to make — and it tells brands exactly which creators can reach their target customer. The same data object, used differently by each side, creates the network effect that makes the platform defensible.
The three-sided design wasn't just a product decision. It was a business model decision. A creator can't leave because their audience data lives there. A brand can't leave because the creator relationships live there. And the connection layer — the part that matches them — is something neither side could build alone.
What I Was Thinking
Show, don't pitch
This product was going to be presented to Bill Gates. The audience was sophisticated — they'd seen countless decks. I wanted every screen to demonstrate a user insight, not describe one. The bubble visualization exists because I needed a way to make "audience segmentation" feel tangible, not abstract.
One week, one constraint
The timeline forced good decisions. I couldn't design everything — so I had to identify the three or four moments that would make or break the story. The publish intelligence screen. The audience bubble visualization. The transition between creator and brand. Those were the moments everything else served.
The existing design system was a gift
I didn't build a custom design system — I used an existing one. Some designers would resist that constraint. I embraced it. It meant I could spend my time on information architecture and interaction design instead of visual primitives. The story was more important than the pixels.
The personas had to be real
Andrew Stonehocker isn't invented wholesale — he's synthesized from real creator interviews. If the persona feels real, every decision that flows from him inherits that credibility. I spent more time on Andrew than on any single screen, because he was the frame for all of them.
What Came Next
VisionType I worked. Bill Gates called it "a good product." The presentation led to increased investment and gave the product team a shared vision to work from for the first time.
VisionType II was where I disagreed. The follow-up proposal leaned toward flexibility — a more open-ended platform where creators could configure their own experience. My view: the first version worked precisely because it was opinionated. The intelligence layer was the product. Making it flexible risked making it generic.
I pushed back, and the direction ultimately went the other way. It didn't dampen the work: I was excited to take on the challenge, and some of my favorite collaboration followed — the Head of Product and I thinking deeply about the system, the capabilities it needed, how each would work and interact. Design leadership means being honest about your read, making the case clearly, and then giving the chosen direction your full effort.