UX Designer & Researcher— , Interaction Design , Information Architecture, Market Analysis
Freelance marketplaces have a core tension. How do you give talent the visibility they need to win work, without exposing them to price gouging or poaching by competitors?
I led the research and design for Marketeq's talent profile system, defining how contractors are discovered and evaluated on the platform. The platform is currently in active development.
Talent is everything.
Designing for discovery
Marketeq is a SaaS freelance marketplace currently in active development. The talent profile is one of its most critical features, serving as the first impression between a freelancer and a potential client. The profile design would be standard design for all teams and agency profiles as well.
Getting it right meant balancing comprehensive talent showcasing with privacy concerns, marketplace fairness, and the risk of price gouging or talent poaching.
Visibility is a double-edged sword.
Designing without a blueprint
Marketeq needed a profile that didn't yet exist. There were no internal precedents, no established patterns — just a complex set of competing needs between freelancers wanting to be discovered and a marketplace that needed to stay fair and safe.
Finding the Answer.
Casting a wide net across industries
We collected screenshots of competitor profiles within the freelance space , best-in-class examples from across industries , and out-of-category references from platforms outside the industry entirely. The goal was to understand what the best in the world were already doing before making any design decisions.
From there, each profile was dissected into its individual features — every element, pattern, and interaction pulled apart and treated as its own distinct piece to evaluate independently
Fiver Pro Features & Sections
Contact Card
Skills & Certifications
Sticky Header Nav
Work & Portfolio
Profile Identity
Client Reviews
Resume
Similar talent
Send Quick message
Work Grid
CTA Sections
Tab Navigation
Affiliated Teams
FAQ Section
Card Sorting for Competitors & Best In Class Platforms
Scenario Thinking
Before any wireframes were drawn, scenarios were used to pressure-test what the card sorting revealed. Each one placed the profile in a real situation — exposing where competing needs would create friction and what the design needed to resolve.
From Audit To Execution.
Categorizing the must haves
Every must have feature was grouped with its reference screenshots before any design decisions were made. This kept the process grounded in real examples and ensured nothing was designed in a vacuum.
Screenshot of Must-have features
Auditing Likes and dislikes.
Each screenshot was audited for what worked and what didn't — surfacing patterns worth keeping and pitfalls worth avoiding. This high level audit gave us a clear, evidence-based direction before a single wireframe was drawn.
Walmart Customer review auditing Process
Translating findings into design..
The audit made clear which patterns earned their place and which were artifacts of a different context entirely. What followed wasn't a redesign from scratch — it was a deliberate translation, keeping what built trust and replacing what didn't.
Wireframe for customer review Section
Multi-dimensional rating breakdown. A single score doesn't tell a hiring client enough. Breaking it into Communication, Delivery, Value, and Professionalism lets clients spot tradeoffs at a glance.
Contract metadata sidebar Walmart's sidebar was built for products. The replacement: price, timeline, hourly rate, and total hours. Same real estate, now earning its keep.
Review context tags Industry and service type surface immediately below the star rating — so you know exactly what lens to read the review through before the first sentence.
Per-review image strip Client images no longer float in a global gallery. They live inside the review that references them — tied to the contract, tied to the work.
The Vision, Realized.
Every research finding, audit insight, and design decision built toward this. The profile you're seeing became the base template across the platform — powering contractor, agency, team, and company profiles alike
High Fidelity components for Marketeq Profiles
What I Learned.
Every round of designs sent me back to the research. That back and forth wasn't a setback — it was the process.
Not everything made sense at first. Taking direction from the team lead, setting ego aside, and letting the feedback shape the work led to better outcomes than going it alone.
Scenarios and variances forced me to consider situations that would have broken the design later. Building for the exceptions made the whole system stronger.
For a project this size and scope, getting the UX and UI to this level of fidelity was a breakthrough — and a foundation I'll carry into every project that follows.
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