Context

Same users, opposite mental model

A marketplace optimises for browsing and discovery; a CRM optimises for managing a pipeline you already have. StudyMarket had to become the second without throwing away the first.

Same users, opposite mental model.

Contribution

What I designed

Designed the dashboard, proposal and prospect screens, the Agent and Provider connections views, and documented the design system across a six-month engagement.

Constraints

Designing for a one-developer build

• One frontend developer building everything, so design had to be unambiguous on handoff
• An existing marketplace interface that couldn't be rebuilt wholesale mid-pivot

Decisions

Lists people can scan, data they can trust

Key decisions

• Used a side panel rather than inline expansion, so inspecting a connection doesn't push every row below it down the page and lose the user's scroll position.
• Made the whole row the click target instead of a chevron, because hunting for a small control is friction in a list users scan quickly.
• Kept tier labels manual with mismatch flagging, so bad data gets surfaced rather than silently auto-assigned.
• Documented 218 tokens as primitives, so spacing and colour decisions get referenced rather than re-negotiated screen by screen.

Outcome

The pattern the CRM is built on

Built a documented primitives layer from 218 design tokens and shipped the connections pattern the CRM is built on.