Activation and freemium design for a fishing-data iOS app

Breakpoint is a saltwater fishing-intelligence app that turns environmental data — sea-surface temperature, chlorophyll, currents, moon, and structure — into scored, ranked, geo-located fishing recommendations. I was brought in to design and build the activation experience: the first-run flow and freemium gating that turn a powerful data engine into something new users feel the value of fast enough to subscribe.

The hard part already existed — a genuinely differentiated scoring engine. The gap was the last 10%: presentation and flow. New users needed to reach an obvious 'aha' moment quickly, and the paywall had to land at exactly the right point — generous enough to prove value, firm enough to convert. Getting that sequence and that gating model right was the difference between a strong engine and a product that actually makes money.

Designed the first-run journey end to end — weather, a waypoint walkthrough, a map-tap route into the data, and a tab structure reorganized around the value moment rather than the feature list.

Designed a 'blurred-veil' gating pattern: locked layers show the real content behind a veil instead of a hard wall, so users see exactly what they're unlocking and want it.

Modeled the freemium economics into the experience — free layers forever, gating on actions, a time-boxed free window, and a signup explainer that sets up the unlock payoff.

Built the whole flow as a working, clickable front-end — not a spec or a set of screens, but a real prototype the client's engineer could integrate directly.

Instrumented activation and conversion funnels and wired them to the subscription events, so the moment the flow ships it can be measured from first run to paid.

Packaged everything as a versioned handoff bundle so integration was a hand-off, not a translation.

A complete, built activation experience delivered as an integration-ready bundle. The freemium gating model runs end to end — free layers, action-based gates, a time-boxed access window, veil-locks with real content behind them, the signup explainer, and the unlock payoff — with the tab navigation restructured around the payoff moment. Alongside it, the activation and conversion funnels are instrumented and wired to the subscription lifecycle, so the engagement ships with its own measurement already in place. The studio's own bottleneck was never the engineering; it was turning a strong engine into a flow that converts — and that flow is what I designed and built.

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