Hi, I'm Amanda.
I design for growth,
trust, and clarity.
I'm a Senior Product Designer working at the intersection of behavioral design, complex systems, and business outcomes — turning ambiguous problems into products people actually understand and use.
How I work
Discovery to delivery, end to end.
I start with the problem, not the solution. At StyleSeat, I led complex product work from research and strategy through to launch and measurable impact.
I'm comfortable in both ambiguity and execution. I run research, define hypotheses, design polished interfaces, and use data to iterate quickly.
I'm especially interested in Side because of the opportunity to design systems that help agents operate more efficiently and grow their businesses. I work closely with product, engineering, and data to ensure decisions are grounded in evidence and aligned with business outcomes.
01
Make value visible
Show the outcome before the ask.
02
Align incentives
Right behavior for user = right for business.
03
Strategic friction
The right friction improves quality downstream.
04
Long-term health
Optimize for durability, not just conversion.
Case Study · StyleSeat
Pro Onboarding
Turning a funnel problem into a behavioral activation system
Onboarding is not just an entry flow at StyleSeat. It is the primary growth lever for activation, marketplace health, and long-term retention. I approached onboarding as a strategic surface to shape Pro behavior, accelerate time-to-value, and align early actions with downstream revenue outcomes.
Context
About StyleSeat
StyleSeat is a two-sided marketplace connecting independent beauty and wellness professionals — Pros — with clients. Pros manage bookings, grow their business, and reach new clients.
Activation and NCC monetization directly determine revenue and marketplace health — making onboarding one of the highest-leverage surfaces in the product.
~4.5M
Appointments/yr
8M+
Clients served
Revenue Model
Growth depends on Pro activation
Subscription plans
Pros pay monthly for platform access
New Client Connection Fees
StyleSeat earns when it delivers a new client to a Pro
Payment Processing
Revenue from every appointment transacted on-platform
Problem Definition
We were acquiring Pros. We weren't activating them.
This wasn't initially framed as an activation problem — teams were focused on sign-up conversion. In partnership with my PM, we reframed it by connecting onboarding behavior to downstream revenue, redefining success from completion to activation.
Project Objective
Increase activation and reduce time-to-first-booking by guiding new Pros toward the highest-impact setup actions (P1C) and clearly communicating the value of StyleSeat's marketplace. Because P1C rate directly determines NCC eligibility and subscription retention, this was one of the highest-leverage surfaces in the product.
North Star Metric
P1C — Marketplace Readiness Threshold
P1C means a Pro has crossed all five marketplace readiness criteria. Only then can they appear in search results — and be discovered and booked by new clients.
- 4+ portfolio photos
- Profile image
- Hours of availability
- 1+ bookable service live
- Bank account connected → listed in search
Parity Baseline
Research & First Test
To ground the work, we conducted:
- Competitive benchmarking across leading marketplaces and SaaS onboarding flows
- Funnel analysis to identify drop-off points
- Qualitative interviews with newly onboarded and high-growth Pros
- Usability testing on the existing onboarding experience
~23%
Services drop-off
2nd highest exit in the flow
~28%
Baseline P1C rate
Marketplace-ready in 30 days
~9%
Sign-up → engaged
Gap between arrival and activation
~3%
Signup → paid sub
Baseline CVR before redesign
Inconsistent patterns
Dated look & feel
Limited service templates
No clear direction
Introduce StyleSeat's value
Updated styles
Traditional service flow
Clarity on what to do next
Exploration
3 directions we considered
We approached onboarding in phases — each iteration helped us understand the problem more deeply.
1. Optimize the existing linear flow
Why it could work: A clearer, more polished experience could improve completion and reduce confusion.
Why it wasn't enough: It improved usability, but didn't change motivation or help Pros understand how setup connected to growth.
2. Reduce steps and shorten onboarding
Why it could work: Removing friction could get Pros through faster and reduce drop-off.
Why it wasn't enough: Faster setup still didn't guarantee value. We risked simplifying the flow without helping Pros become successful on the platform.
3. Reframe onboarding as an ongoing system
Why it could work: Instead of a one-time checklist, we could use onboarding to drive the behaviors most correlated with activation and long-term retention.
Why we chose it: The real problem wasn't friction — it was that no step felt meaningfully connected to growth.
Key insight
We had improved the flow, but not the outcome. Pros weren't failing because setup was too long — they were failing because onboarding still felt like admin work instead of business growth.
What we wanted Pros to do
Get their first appointment on the calendar
Add their existing clients
Earn an early review
These were small, high-value actions that helped Pros experience what StyleSeat could actually do for their business — quick wins that made them more invested through action.
Phase 2: Quests
The pivot to Quests: getting Pros to the "Aha Moment"
Based on these learnings, we shifted from a linear onboarding flow to an incentive-driven Quest framework. The goal was to help Pros take meaningful actions inside the product — not just finish setup.
- A series of high-impact, outcome-oriented goals
- A mix of "Grow your business" and "Run your business" tasks
- A repeatable engagement loop instead of a one-time setup flow
- Built-in rewards like free trial extensions, credits, and visibility boosts tied to completion
Quests focused on getting Pros to value sooner: booking that first appointment, adding clients, and getting an early review. By pairing guidance with rewards, Quests turned onboarding from a usability problem into a growth engine.
Design Hypothesis
Pros weren't failing because setup was too long. They were failing because no step felt connected to growth. Reframing onboarding as business milestones — each with visible outcomes and incentive-backed rewards — would accelerate the “aha” moment.
Results
Accelerated time to value.
P1C Doubled
P1C Rate
From 28% to 58%
4×
Signup to Paid Sub CVR
All-time high new subscribers
+18%
New Client Connections
Increase per provider, first 30 days
+17%
Search to Booking CVR
Search to booking conversion
Craft & System Thinking
A system built during a rebrand.
This project didn't just ship screens — it shipped new patterns at a moment when StyleSeat was also undergoing a complete rebrand. That meant foundational decisions about components, tokens, and visual language were being made in parallel. The net new components built for onboarding became part of the system, not exceptions to it.
The quest anatomy — four required properties
Every Quest had to answer four questions. This wasn't a style guide — it was a behavioural contract.
Why the system could scale
Because the Quest pattern is composable, adding a new Quest means defining four properties — not rebuilding the experience. We shipped "Test drive your calendar" and "Start getting new clients" first. Engineering could add a third Quest without a design handoff for the architecture, only for the new content.
Post-activation, the same pattern powered ongoing engagement loops — Lifecycle could trigger new Quests based on Pro behaviour using the same component library. One pattern, infinite milestones.
Quest Pattern — Composable Properties
+ Any future milestone maps to these same four properties
Collaboration
Product design is a team sport.
Uke Jain
Product Manager
Shaped problem framing, held business context. We aligned on P1C as north star together — that shared definition meant every design decision was anchored to the same outcome.
Jack Clegg
Analytics Partnership
Not just reporting on results — research partners. Worked directly with them to map funnel drop-offs before any design work began and helped define P1C criteria and measurement window.
Sean Elliott
Engineering Manager
Genuine design partner, not just implementor. Early inclusion meant engineering constraints shaped the design rather than blocking it.
Ihor Volkov
Quality Assurance
Flagged critical bugs in Phase 1 scope — Terms modal form-clear bug, photo blank state, category edit data loss — enabling a clean baseline we could actually measure from.