Case study / 01Oct 2024–Apr 2026

LYVELY

Designing a creator platform where people post content, sell memberships, book one-to-one sessions, take video calls and get tipped by their audience.

UI designUX strategyDesign systemsPayments UXGamification

A creator platform built around earning.

Lyvely is a creator platform. People post content, sell memberships, book one-to-one sessions, take video calls with their audience and get tipped for it. It started out serving the UAE, and later moved into Africa, as well.

I joined as the product designer responsible for owning every monetization feature and worked alongside a remote team of around 15 to 20 people across web, mobile and backend.

After a few months, I was the sole product designer in charge of the entire product, on every platform. I designed across the design system rollout, settings, creator dashboard, video calls and recordings, payments layer, and the gamification system built to bring people back.

Role: Product Designer
Platforms: Web, iOS and Android
Team: 15–20 people

Shipping continuously across every platform.

The product shipped continuously across web, iOS and Android for the length of the engagement.

Tipping went live on mobile first, then extended to pay-to-view posts, sessions and memberships. The Africa launch followed. Live streaming shipped on web and mobile. Games, leaderboards and a points system landed within weeks of each other.

The Lyvely app was also approved for integration into the M-PESA super app.

The important work happened at the edges.

01 / Payments

Designing payments for two very different wallets.

The platform had to run two payment rails at once without asking the user to understand either of them.

I mapped the flows around location instead of settings. A user in the UAE sees a card checkout. A user in Kenya sees a phone number for the M-PESA payment processor. The tip button looks the same in both places. Currency defaults to the user's region and stays changeable in billing.

The harder problems were the edges: what creators see when their audience pays in a currency they do not hold, what happens when the recipient has no wallet connected, and which features disappear when a provider does not operate in someone's country.

Lyvely creator dashboard with sales, payouts and M-PESA onboarding

Lyvely App Store presentation showing its creator and communication features

02 / Paid content

Making paid content worth unlocking.

Locked posts were showing up as blank grey blocks. There was nothing to attract buyers.

I redesigned the preview so the post still communicates something before payment: blurred imagery instead of a blank frame, chips describing exactly what is inside, PDFs showing the first page, page count and file size, and audio showing duration.

The buyer now knows what they are getting, and the creator sees their sales increase. It's a win-win.

03 / Video calls

Rebuilding the calling experience.

Video calls were the feature investors and partners asked about most, and the interface was scattered across menus.

Working with the founders, I brought the participants list out of the hidden menu and onto the main toolbar, rearranged the control row with tooltips, and designed an in-call profile preview so nobody had to leave the tab. Guests were clearly labelled as guests.

Then recordings and AI summaries went on top: who can start one, who can see it afterwards, how it gets shared, and what an unauthorized person sees instead.

Lyvely mobile product screens including its video calling experience

Lyvely web feed with creator spotlights and product navigation

04 / Product foundations

Fixing the parts nobody demos.

Settings, security, blocked users, purchase history, notification copy. None of it makes a pitch deck.

I rebuilt settings across web and mobile: profile with drag-and-drop custom links, active sessions by device and location, memberships, blocked users and referrals.

I added a purchases section so people could find what they had already paid for. This kind of work is invisible when done right.

“Our pitch decks look incredible, thank you so much Luka. We love your little demo videos.”

Farah ZafarLyvely CEO & Co-Founder

05 / Retention

Adding a reason to come back.

User growth was the number that mattered. Retention was the way to protect it.

I designed a gamification layer on top of the existing product: a points system with weekly, monthly and yearly leaderboards, games surfaced in Explore and directly in the feed, and a spotlight carousel for live and featured content.

Points for paying actions stayed uncapped. Points for engagement got a daily ceiling, so the system rewarded real activity instead of comment farming.

A small detail I liked was a tap animation that highlights the specific item earning points, so the first time someone uploads a cover photo they are obviously rewarded.

“Luka is an exceptionally talented designer, one of those rare people who combines strong creative instinct with a deep understanding of product and user experience.”

Dave CatudalCo-founder & Growth Architect at Lyvely

The decisions that mattered most had very little to do with visuals.

They came from asking what happens when a payment provider does not exist in someone's country, when forty people join a call on a cheap Android phone, or when the only thing standing between a creator and a sale is a grey rectangle.

Designing for an unfamiliar market meant asking a lot of questions before drawing anything. That turned out to be the job. What helped a lot was AI.

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