How I designed a platform that helped creators earn $40,000+ from their knowledge
Tapflow
LMS
Web
Tapflow is a platform that helps experts turn what they know into paid digital products like courses, guides and templates.
It includes an intuitive block editor, built-in payments, and a ready-made landing page. Everything is designed to help creators launch fast, without additional skills.
Problem & Goal
Many professionals want to turn their expertise into passive income, but most LMS platforms are complex and time-consuming. As a result, valuable content often stays buried in notes, slides and ideas.
Tapflow was built to change that: to help people monetize their knowledge in a simple, intuitive way, with minimal setup and no friction.
My Role
I joined Tapflow as the only designer in a 6-person team. I worked closely with the CEO and was responsible for the end-to-end user experience:
Designing user flows and responsive layouts
Creating and scaling the design system
Prototyping, testing and iterating on features
Designing in a startup meant moving fast, adapting constantly and finding clarity in chaos. My focus was to set up a simple process that worked for our small team while keeping the product intuitive and user-focused.
Building the Core
After early research, I discussed concept possibilities with the team, and we aligned on shaping the product creation around 3 clear steps:
1. Adding content
Authors write chapters using a familiar block-based editor that supports videos, images, tables, embeds, and files. This approach gives them full creative freedom to structure their content as they like.
2. Setting tier plans
Creators can create free or paid plans and choose which chapters go into each plan. This allowed flexible monetization while keeping setup simple and intuitive.
3. Creating Landing Page
Each product comes with a clean, mobile-ready page powered by the same block editor. It’s easy to edit, consistent across the platform and lays the groundwork for a more advanced builder in the future.
These decisions became the foundation of product creation flow — focused, scalable and easy to use.
Design System
To speed up development and reduce inconsistencies, I created a clean and minimal design system from scratch with reusable components, interaction states, color tokens, and clear documentation. It streamlined our workflow and made development easier.
Solving UX Challenges
As Tapflow grew, we added many new features and learned a lot about our users and their needs. Here are two examples of the problems I worked on:
✨ File → Draft AI Generator
Problem: Users signed up and explored the editor, but dropped off after writing just a few lines. We needed to fix that.
Process: I conducted 6 interviews with such users and learned that:
The blank page was overwhelming, even with templates and a getting-started guide
Many users had raw content (like notes or slides) but struggled to turn it into something sellable
We knew AI could help, but building a full chat-based assistant was too complex for our resources. So I proposed a simpler approach: users upload a file, and AI instantly generates a product draft — no chat, no extra steps.
Impact: I mapped the flow, designed the interface, and worked with engineering to define prompt behavior. The feature attracted a lot of users and increased content creation.
🗓 Scheduled Publishing
Problem: Some creators wanted to release content gradually, for example once per week, but had to publish updates manually, which was inconvenient and error-prone.
When I need to open the next chapter for my readers, I want to do it in advance at a convenient time so I don’t have to think about it later.
Process: While working on this feature, I realized that it would change how publishing worked in general. At that time, creators could only publish the full product. But with scheduling, some chapters needed to stay unpublished until their release date.
I explored different options for integrating scheduling into the publishing overlay while keeping the experience simple. Early drafts included publishing and scheduling for both product and chapters in one modal, but that made the flow too complicated.
Eventually, I landed on a cleaner flow:
First, creators have to publish the whole product
After that, they can update either the product or individual chapters
If a new chapter is added, it will be in drafts and has to be published
Once the flow was clear, I designed the scheduling experience: a calendar picker, corner cases and states, all integrated into the updated publishing overlay.
After finalizing the flow, I tested it using Pathway, a usability testing platform. It worked well overall and after a few quick fixes, we rolled it out.
Impact: The feature gave authors more control over how and when they release content, which made Tapflow more useful and satisfying to use.
Beyond Product Work
In addition to my core UX responsibilities, I also contributed to visual and marketing efforts:
Designed visuals and banners for Product Hunt launch
Created our landing page in Framer in collaboration with the CEO
Designed email templates and helped shape outreach flows
Created product templates to support onboarding for new authors
Outcomes
Here’s what came out of this journey with a small team and an idea:
Lessons Learned
Working in a startup taught me how to move fast while keeping the experience clear and consistent
You can make confident product decisions even with limited data, by listening closely to users
