Stanible Web App

The problem

Stanible sells digital collectibles from celebrity creators. Fans buy with their e-wallets and showcase their collections to fellow “stans.” In 2022 that was a genuinely novel concept in the Philippines: before you can design the purchase flow, you have to sell the idea of paying for something you can't hold.

The client didn't hand us a spec. They handed us a question:

So the brief was really two problems: figure out what a web app is for when a mobile app already exists, and do it for users who don't yet believe in the product category. Two weeks to answer both.

My role

I led interaction design. Our researcher ran the interviews; I owned everything downstream: turning her insights into design decisions, building a fully functional hand-off prototype, running usability testing, and pitching the recommendations back to the client.

Two weeks total, research to hand-off.

Define & ideate

Start with the fans, not the platform

We interviewed 5 super fans around three questions: what content, collectibles, and engagements do stans value most; what would make a web app essential next to the mobile app; and where do they already go to engage with their idols.

Two personas anchored the work. Isabelle Rivera, 30, a decade-long Angel Locsin fan and OPM supporter, wants personalized merch and acknowledgment from her idol, but can't find reliable sellers and hates lining up. Marieta Dangal, a Gen Z college student and Liza Soberano/Enrique Gil fan, finds merch overpriced and, critically, doesn't see the value in digital merch at all. Marieta is the harder persona, which is why she mattered more: she's the market Stanible has to convert, not the one it already has.

Three insights, three decisions

Affinity mapping the interviews produced three insights. Each one became a design goal, and each goal became a feature in the prototype: a deliberate one-to-one trace, so the client could see exactly why every recommendation existed.

1. Stans want to know what they're getting into before joining. Digital collectibles are an unproven value proposition; a sign-up wall in front of one is a dead end.

→ A browsing feed for non-users. Top creators, trending collections, tabs, persistent search, and the community section visible but locked. The homepage does the selling before the sign-up form asks for anything.

2. Stans want the closest possible experience to physical interaction: meet-and-greets, concerts. Isabelle's biggest pains are unreliable sellers and lining up; the digital version should remove the queue, not the intimacy.

→ “Live Now,” a meet-and-greet livestream. Live chat, with pinned and prioritized chats for collectors: owning a collectible buys you proximity, which finally gives it tangible value. The creator's collectibles are purchasable in-stream, with no page switching.

3. Stans follow creators, not platforms. Loyalty lives with the idol; fans feel FOMO the moment their creator is active somewhere they aren't.

→ Community. News, conversations, showcasing collectibles, direct engagement with creators. A reason to come back that's anchored to the creator, so the platform inherits the loyalty instead of having to earn it from scratch.

Testing the solutions

Validating the prototype

I ran usability testing with 3 participants recruited against the personas, testing both the existing mobile app and the new web prototype. The comparison was the point, since “why does the web version exist?” was the client's original question.

Results, read honestly

The headline numbers say tasks were easy to complete. The more valuable finding is comparative: participants grasped the digital-collectibles concept better on the web app than on mobile, and accomplished tasks with fewer clicks and less scrolling. That was design goal #1 (make the web version the front door that explains the product) and it was met.

The 78% UX and effort scores against 97% task success also told me something: the flows worked, but the experience around them had room to mature. With three participants, that's a signal to investigate, not a conclusion, which shaped the next steps.

Recommended next steps

• Test with a larger sample. Three persona-matched participants validated direction; they can't validate detail. The 78%-vs-97% gap deserves a proper round.
• Iterate on the prototype from that round's findings before build.
• Dogfood. Stanible's own team are fans of somebody; they should live in the product and feel where the value proposition sags before their users do.

What this project taught me

This was a project where the concept needed selling before the interface did. When the product category itself is unproven, the first job of design isn't usability. It's making the value legible to someone like Marieta, who walks in skeptical. Designing the homepage as a pitch, the livestream as proximity, and the community as creator-loyalty capture was one argument made three ways: give stans a reason to believe before you ask them to sign up.

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