Summary

I began my work at Off the Grid—a Bay Area organization that curates food experiences through markets, catering, and large-scale events—with a comprehensive audit of its multi-sided workflow—mapping the full journey for both creators (food vendors) and internal event managers. Off the Grid supports a wide range of event types, from large public markets to catering and emergency relief feedings, each with unique demands.

We found that onboarding was a major point of friction, especially for new vendors and those with recurring compliance issues. I led the design of the Creator App, a flexible, self-serve platform that streamlined onboarding, documentation, scheduling, and availability. The tool empowered creators, reduced manual coordination, and laid the groundwork for scalable vendor management.

My role
Principal Product Designer
End-to-end planning & design

Project Duration
Mar 2019 - Feb 2020
(Suite of 3 native & web apps & universal design system created concurrently)

Team composition
1 product manager
1 product designer (myself)
1 chief product officer
Dev team of ~5

Focus areas
product design • Systems thinking • ux design

The Challenge

Off the Grid was rapidly scaling its network of mobile food vendors (“Creators”), hosting weekly events that served 9,000+ guests across the Bay Area and expanding quickly into event types like corporate catering and emergency meal programs. As the business diversified, the internal systems supporting vendor management struggled to keep pace.

Although a product infrastructure existed, it had been reactively built—solving short-term needs without a cohesive, long-term vision. For creators, this led to inconsistent onboarding experiences, unclear requirements, and a lack of visibility into their own progress. Internal teams, meanwhile, spent an unsustainable number of hours manually guiding vendors through each stage of onboarding and event prep.

Discovery

To understand where the friction was coming from, I conducted a deep audit of the entire product ecosystem—mapping the multi-sided journey from initial vendor interest through onboarding, scheduling, event execution, and post-event follow-up.

The audit revealed that onboarding was the clearest point of breakdown. While the infrastructure technically enabled the journey, it didn’t support it with clarity or cohesion. Critical actions were buried, compliance requirements weren’t clearly communicated, and internal teams had to manually guide vendors through every step. It became evident that the onboarding experience was not only slowing down internal operations—it was also creating uncertainty and inefficiencies for creators.

Process

To inform the onboarding redesign, I partnered closely with the product manager to conduct in-depth interviews and data gathering across teams. We spoke with Creator Success, operations, and a cross-section of vendors—ranging from new applicants to long-time participants—to surface friction points, time sinks, and opportunities for improvement.

Our objectives were twofold:

1. Understand the operational cost of inefficiency—particularly the hours spent on manual outreach and incomplete onboarding loops.
2. Capture aspirational improvements—what a better experience would look like for both creators and internal teams.

The research revealed a consistent pattern: creators lacked clarity around what was required of them, had little visibility into their onboarding status, and often needed repeated follow-ups to stay on track. These gaps not only impacted their experience but placed an unsustainable burden on support staff.

At the same time, I began developing a lightweight design system to bring visual and behavioral consistency across the Creator App. This foundational system established scalable patterns for form inputs, buttons, states, and layouts—making the onboarding flow easier to navigate and faster to build. It also helped align design with development, speeding implementation and creating a more cohesive product experience.

Solution

We launched a redesigned onboarding experience within the Creator App that offered flexibility, guidance, and clarity. Key features included:

• Progressive onboarding: allowed new creators to move step-by-step through requirements without overwhelm, while giving returning users a clear view of outstanding compliance issues

• Smart data collection: gathered robust vendor information (menus, certifications, availability, equipment) in a way that felt approachable and relevant, even for those unfamiliar with Off the Grid’s systems

• Event-readiness tracking: helped creators understand what was needed to qualify for different event types, enabling internal teams to better match them to opportunities

• Self-serve profile management: reduced the dependency on internal outreach for updates and compliance follow-ups