Role: Acting design co-founder Brief: Launch Disciplines: iOS App, Brand Identity, Product Strategy

Inspo was a lifestyle visual inspiration app with generative AI editing. Originally backed by Sam Altman and Ev Williams, this product concept was a pivot for a startup experimenting with how LLMs could make better consumer social experiences. I helped with defining the product vision, creating the user experience, and designing the interface for a concept that was completed but not launched.

Pinterest proves people want to collect aesthetic inspiration and references. But often the images we save are never quite right—wrong color couch, different kitchen layout, a style that's close but not yours. It often needs a translation layer. Inspo was designed to do that: save what inspires you, then make it your own. I helped the founder pivot from a pure social network concept to this over a few weeks in the summer. We finished the work. It never shipped. So it goes.

The target audience was millennial women. They've used Pinterest for years. They're skeptical of new apps. The brand couldn't feel like a tech startup. It needed to also incorporate the warmth of a lifestyle publication like Domino or Kinfolk. Warmer, softer palette. Enough personality to feel mostly feminine and inviting, but then enough restraint to stay out of the way.

The feed works like Pinterest because Pinterest works. A grid of ideas. Scroll, save, organize into collections. No learning curve. The interface stays quiet so the images can be loud. We weren’t trying to reinvent browsing. We were trying to make what comes after better.

This is where Inspo wanted to do something new. Select a saved idea. Swap the wall color. Remove the rug. Add a plant. Change the table to something that fits your place. The LLM-powered creative tools let you reshape inspiration into something usable—an image of your taste that’a also applied to your constraints. The goal was to make it a considered tool, not the generic slop seeping into every feed.