From Concept to Cannes: Designing the Togetherr Platform at Fiverr

Overview

As a founding Product Designer at Togetherr, I designed an AI platform connecting global brands with elite creative teams, leading the product from initial concept to its launch at the Cannes Lions Festival.

What I did

Brand Translation
Design System Building
User Experience
User Interface
Prototyping & Test
Developer Collaboration

The Team

Lead Product Designer
Product Designer (Me)
Project Manager
Ops Lead
Tech Lead
4 Developers

Context

Fiverr

Fiverr is a leading global marketplace that connects businesses with on-demand freelance talent. The platform offers a vast range of digital services, from design and writing to programming.

Introduction

New Idea, Blank Canvas

In 2022, I joined Togetherr, a new in-house startup within the Fiverr ecosystem, as a founding Product Designer. As part of a lean, ground-floor team, I had the unique opportunity to not only shape a new product from its inception but also help build its foundational design processes and culture.

As part of a two-person design team, my role was comprehensive. We adopted a fully collaborative, paired-design model, sharing equal responsibility across the entire product to ensure cohesion and eliminate knowledge silos.

Problem

The Agency Bottleneck

For major brands, the traditional path to launching a creative campaign was through an agency. However, this model presented two fundamental problems that led to suboptimal outcomes:

The Talent Availability Trap

Brands were limited to the agency's immediate network. This often meant compromising on talent based on who was available, rather than who was truly the best fit for the project, resulting in teams that were not genuinely tailor-made.

The Market-Relevance Gap

Agencies often assign talent without considering nuanced local market knowledge. A creative team based in one region might be tasked with a campaign for another, leading to time zone friction and, more critically, a campaign that doesn't resonate with the local culture.

Solution

An AI-First Creative Marketplace

We set out to dismantle this bottleneck. By creating a massive, global pool of elite, vetted creative talent, we gave brands access to the best in the world. Our AI engine was the key to unlocking this potential, analyzing a creative's entire professional footprint—their experience, past projects, brand affiliations, and location—to assemble hyper-specific, market-aware teams.

This approach was a fundamental shift that allowed brands to move from brief to launch at an unprecedented speed, creating the perfect, market-aware creative team, on-demand.

For Brands

An intelligent system to recruit and manage bespoke creative teams, curated by AI for optimal project and market fit.

For Creatives

An exclusive, vetted social network for top-tier freelancers to showcase their work and connect with premium opportunities.

Design process

A Designers' Design System

We created a platform that felt like it was made by designers, for designers, drawing inspiration from Swiss Design. This was translated into a minimalist and confident visual language:

Pragmatic Validation: Adapting to Startup Speed

Given our rapid, MVP-focused timeline, extensive, formal user research wasn't feasible. To ensure our designs were effective, we adopted a pragmatic validation strategy: pressure-testing our high-fidelity Figma prototypes with fellow designers in Fiverr's internal Design Guild.

We conducted moderated usability tests, giving them specific tasks to complete, which allowed us to quickly identify points of friction and validate our information architecture without slowing down development.

Design Deep Dive

Team Selection View

My primary challenge was designing the most critical user flow: the "Client Project Setup" and the AI-powered "Team Builder". The summit of this flow was the Team Selection View—the "aha!" moment where the AI delivers its value. The challenge was to present complex, AI-generated recommendations in a way that was immediately understandable, compelling, and built trust.

Final direction

From Portfolio-First to Credibility-First

Our initial hypothesis was that clients cared most about portfolios. However, after conducting interviews with several senior marketing managers, we uncovered a different hierarchy of needs. Their primary concern was trust and credibility. This insight led to a complete design pivot.

Final Direction

Early Exploration

Early Exploration

We redesigned the screen to elevate the most critical trust-building elements "above the fold":

The AI-Generated Rationale

The first element on the page was a single, dynamic sentence summarizing why the AI recommended this specific team (e.g., "Assembled for their recognized work with Amazon and Microsoft, and specialized experience in the metaverse."). This built immediate trust and reassurance.

Human-Centered Presentation

We led with a carousel of large, professional profile photos, creating an immediate emotional connection to the proposed team members.

At-a-Glance Social Proof

We included a logo bar of prestigious companies the team had worked with and a dedicated area for major industry awards (Cannes Lions, Clios, etc.). This visual shorthand instantly communicated a world-class level of credibility.

Financial Transparency

A clear, all-inclusive estimated cost was displayed upfront to allow for a fully informed decision.

Visualizing Team Synergy

To further build confidence in the team's fit, we added a feature to visually represent the connections between the teammates, showing if they had successfully collaborated in the past or shared awards.

Impact

Impact in Under a Year

As a new venture, we set ambitious KPIs for our first year of operation. Despite the company's journey being cut short due to external market factors, we achieved significant traction:

6,000±

Vetted community of elite freelancers

We curated and onboarded an exclusive community of ~6,000 elite freelancers from around the world.

73%

Freelancers with complete profiles

We curated and onboarded an exclusive community of 6,000 elite freelancers from around the world.

4

Ongoing major projects

We successfully initiated two major projects for global brand clients, validating the demand for our solution.

A Big Launch,
A Sad Ending

I was a core part of the Togetherr team for one intense and rewarding year. We successfully transitioned the platform from a concept to a live product, culminating in a global launch at the prestigious Cannes Lions Festival in 2022.

In 2023, the company's journey was cut short due to broader market instability that led to the startup's closure. While the project ended abruptly, the experience of building and launching a product at such speed was invaluable.

Reflection

Looking back

This intense year as a founding designer was an incredible learning experience that shaped my approach to product design.

The Art of Pragmatic Prioritization

I learned to rigorously prioritize features and make strategic trade-offs, finding creative workarounds to deliver value quickly without sacrificing the core user experience.

Bridging the Gap Between Design and Engineering

I learned that bridging the gap between design and engineering is critical. To improve our collaboration, I took the initiative to learn the fundamentals of HTML and CSS. This not only improved my design handoffs but also gave me a more realistic understanding of technical constraints from the start.

The Design System as a Force Multiplier

I experienced firsthand how a robust design system, perfectly synced between Figma and a developer's Storybook, is essential for eliminating ambiguity and dramatically accelerating a team's ability to build and iterate.

Made with love from Eindhoven, NL.

Typeset in Neutral Sans and Or Sans made especially for the portfolio.

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orharel(at)outlook.com

orharel(at)outlook.com

orharel(at)outlook.com