VisionType Product Walkthrough
The product-design chapter of Creating Alignment When No One Agreed on the Future. Three sides of one product — creator, brand, and the connection between them.
The research and strategy had established the direction. I had roughly one week to make it tangible — designing a platform that connected creators, brands, and the intelligence layer between them. I reused an existing design system so I could focus on information architecture, interaction design, and the few decisive moments that made the three-sided value clear.
This is a product concept recreated for the portfolio. The platform progressed, but funding was withdrawn before broad release; the original business ambition remained unrealized.
Below is an interactive recreation of the VisionType concept — 21 steps across three acts. Click the pulsing elements inside the prototype, use Next, or your ← → keys. Short on time? Choose 5 highlights for the essential product story; the gold marks identify those moments in the full walkthrough.
The people, campaigns, and performance figures inside the walkthrough illustrate the proposed experience. They are not reported customer results.
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 could help them choose what content to make, while helping brands find creators with relevant audiences. The same data, used differently by each side, was the basis of the proposed network effect.
The three-sided design wasn't just a product decision. It was a business model hypothesis: useful audience insights and creator relationships could give both sides reasons to return. We still needed to test whether the connection layer created enough value for creators and brands to use it together.
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.
The Story Behind the Screens
These screens were the tangible expression of a larger leadership challenge: helping an agency and a software business see one shared future.
The companion case study covers the acquisition context, the research that found common ground, the strategic decisions behind this product direction, and the organizational alignment built within my first 60 days, and the later funding constraints that kept the original platform vision from broad release.