BRKAWAY
Streamlining brand and content creator collaboration from brief to final post.
Overview
Brkaway connects brands and content creators in one seamless workflow.
Intro
Brkaway’s mission is to help brands effortlessly manage their collaborations with content creators, while also providing content creators the tools they need to be successful entrapreneurs.
To date, Brkaway is used by 10,000+ content creators and 300+ brands to streamline brand-content creator collaborations.
Problem
Brands struggle to work with content creators efficiently. Brands rely on scattered workflows - spreadsheets, lengthy email chains, Dropbox, Notion, and DMs - to manage creator partnerships.
This disorganized setup leads to missed opportunities, delayed content approvals, and heavy admin work that slows projects down.
Outcome
I designed an end-to-end workflow where brands can post opportunities and evaluate creators, then seamlessly move into a structured Brkaway collaboration.
This streamlined experience reduces brand admin workload by 70%, cuts setup time by 75%, and improves creator visibility by 40%.
Role & Responsibilities
As the sole product designer, I led the project end-to-end:
Partnered with co-founders and brands to identify core pain points.
Created journey maps and prototypes covering the full workflow.
Ran rapid design reviews, high-fidelity design, and usability testing with 20+ brands.
Collaborated with engineering to ship a fully integrated opportunity-to-collab experience.
Timeline
Iterated over 2 years
Problem
Brands waste hours in emails, spreadsheets, and scattered tools - making it difficult to manage multiple projects with content creators.
Managing content creator partnerships is a messy, manual process for brands. Brands dig through emails, spreadsheets, and DMs to track creators, then juggle Dropbox, Google Docs, and other tools to run campaigns. This fragmented process causes brands to waste hours on admin, miss great creators, and struggle to keep campaigns on track, often delaying impactful content.
Solution
From collecting creator applicants to managing deliverables, Brkaway gives brands a single platform to run social media campaigns end-to-end.
Brkaway unifies the collaboration workflow in one platform, giving brands a single place to manage their content creator partnerships from start to finish. Brands can post opportunities, review and shortlist creator applicants, and seamlessly transition into structured projects with clear deliverable stages. Feedback, revisions, and approvals all happen in one place, replacing scattered tools and freeing brands to focus on producing greater content, faster.
My Role
I led research, design, and testing to shape the core product experience.
I led several brainstorming, research synthesis, and journey mapping sessions.
I ran usability tests with 20+ users.
I collaborated closely with the co-founders and engineers to deliver the final product.
Low-Fidelity Sketches & Ideas
Starting with pen and paper to quickly ideate different flows.
Visualizing the end-to-end experience
Before sketching any low‑fidelity mocks, I built a journey map to ground the work in reality. It turned months of brand feedback into a clear, end‑to‑end flow, giving the team a shared vision of the “ideal” experience before we committed pixels to the screen.
Sketching out lo-fi wireframes
I ideated over a number of potential solutions and user flows. I used sketches to solidify thoughts and draw out how I wanted interactions to work.
Iterating on Feedback
Usability tests revealed where creators struggled, while design reviews with the CEO highlighted business requirements. Iterating on both helped shape a workflow that was intuitive and impactful.
Creating an opportunity
The main challenge here was preventing brands from posting blank opportunities. Through rapid design reviews with my co-founders, I iterated on layout, copy, and data hierarchy to create a step-by-step flow that ensured key details were always completed upfront.
Landing on an empty opportunity page meant relying on users to fill in the opportunity details themselves. This opened up the possibility of users leaving opportunity details blank, which wasn’t ideal.
Clear step-by-step sections in the opportunity setup encourages users to fill out opportunity-specific information, ensuring that opportunity details are available from the get go.
Managing applicants
Brands needed an easy way to label and organize applicants. Early designs allowed ratings but didn’t separate applicants clearly, making it hard to spot the right fits. I redesigned the dashboard and tagging logic so brands could instantly sort applicants into “shortlist” or “not a fit,” giving them a clear overview and simpler talent management.
Users can rate each applicant depending on whether they’re a good fit, not a fit, etc. But this view doesn’t organize them into appropriate groups.
All creator applicants related to this opportunity can be found in one place, making it easy to view and manage all creators. Creators can be sorted into appropriate sections, making it easy to organize and find creators later.
Adding collabs
Originally, adding a collab only required a name, causing brands to land on an empty page with no guidance. This led to incomplete projects missing key details like deliverables, pay, and briefs. I redesigned the flow into a step-by-step setup that required essential info upfront, ensuring collabs always started with full context and were ready to move forward.
When adding a collab, brands only needed to fill in collab name and creator information. Once added, brands landed on an empty collab page and often didn’t know what to do next. Add deliverables? Add creators? Share? This meant there were many incomplete collabs with little context given.
Adding a collab is now a step-by-step process, encouraging users to fill in essential information before a collab is created.
Reworking the collab page
Early versions hid key details like briefs, attachments, and payment terms behind tabs, leaving fields blank and confusing brands. I redesigned the page to surface all essentials on the main view, creating a single project hub where everything is easy to find and manage.
Important collab details was hidden behind a tab, meaning that this information often went unfilled. Users also weren’t adding deliverables despite there being two clear buttons to do so.
Collab details are surfaced on the main page, making it easy for users to find briefs, attachments, etc. With the new “add collab” flow, users are encouraged to add deliverables so when they land on this page, the deliverables are viewable.
Deliverable workflow
The original deliverable flow forced brands to approve or reject all assets at once, making feedback inefficient. I redesigned it to allow per-asset feedback, creating a clearer review process that streamlined revisions and saved brands time during approvals.
These actions apply to all submitted content and was intended to make it easy for users to bulk approve or request changes on assets. However, users wanted the ability to approve or request changes on a per-asset-basis.
Now brands can review assets on a per-asset-basis, making it easier to provide feedback to creators.
Final Designs
Putting it all together.
Brkaway consolidates opportunity creation, content creator management, and collaborations into one cohesive workflow, tackling brands’ biggest pain points. This streamlined approach saves time, reduces wasted effort, and ensures no promising creator is overlooked, with features shaped by user research and stakeholder feedback.
Outcome & Impact
Early adoption metrics and tangible value delivered to brands.
Reduced busywork for brands
70% reduction in brand admin workflow
Setup reduced from hours to minutes
75% faster setup (from 2 hours to 30 mins)
Strong momentum out of the gate
Early adoption with 300+ brands and 10,000+ creators
Smoother feedback loops
Streamlined revision cycles for creators, saving thousands of hours annually
No talent left behind
40% more applications reviewed, preventing strong candidates from slipping through the cracks
Challenges & Lessons Learned
What went wrong, what surprised us, and how those insights will shape future releases.
Challenge: User adoption
Many teams are accustomed to spreadsheets, ad hoc emails, and scattered workflows across different project management apps. This can make them resistant to a structured workflow.
Lessons learned
Pair the release with contextual tool-tips, a short in-app tour, and overall education to make the transition as smooth as possible and to show them Brkaway’s value fast.
Challenge: Limited user testing pre-launch
Tight timelines pushed us to rely on co-founder design crit sessions instead of wider user testing, so edge cases and usability pain points may surface only after real-world use.
Lessons learned
It was crucial for us to schedule follow-up testing rounds; “ship → measure → refine” is now baked into our post-release plan. We’ve also made sure to schedule calls with our brand users to gather feedback.