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Pilo (Marketplace)
Designed and built PILO, an on-demand platform connecting barbers with barbershops to fill empty chairs and unlock new revenue opportunities.
PILO addresses a major gap in the barbering industry: empty chairs and last-minute client demand. No existing solution offered fast, trustworthy, short-term staffing between barbers and shop owners.
As the End-to-End Product Designer, I led the creation of the MVP across both barber and shop owner experiences, including research, journey mapping, high-fidelity design, and interactive prototyping in Lovable.
Role: End-to-End Product Designer
Industry: Marketplace, Gig Economy
Tools: Figma, Lovable
Timeline: 2025
This work focused on validating a two-sided marketplace, balancing the needs of barbers, shop owners, and clients while shaping the core booking and shift model.
Each side of the marketplace faced critical friction:
• Needed same-day or last-minute bookings
• Wanted access to verified, trustworthy stylists
• Lacked confidence that appointments would be honored
• Needed flexible, short-term work opportunities
• Struggled to find reliable, consistent gigs
• Lacked clear expectations before accepting shifts
• Needed to fill empty chairs quickly
• Had no centralized way to post and manage shifts
No existing platform effectively connected barbers and shop owners in real time, leaving supply and demand fragmented and preventing fast, reliable on-demand staffing.
I interviewed stylists, clients, and shop owners and mapped their end-to-end workflows.
• They needed transparency around pay, shop rules, and required tools
• They wanted fast ways to filter shifts
• They needed strong trust signals
• They wanted confidence stylists would show up
• Competitors like The Cut and Booksy were designed for appointments not staffing
• ShearShare supported chair rentals not short-term shifts
Opportunity: Build the first platform focused on flexible, on-demand barber staffing.
To design PILO’s MVP, I focused on structuring a two-sided marketplace that balanced the needs of barbers, shop owners, and clients while enabling fast, reliable on-demand interactions.
• Mapped the relationships between barbers, shop owners, and clients to establish how supply and demand would connect, focusing on trust, availability, and speed
• Defined the key flows that powered the platform, including posting shifts, applying to work, reviewing applicants, and managing bookings across all user types
• Designed mobile-first experiences and created an interactive prototype in Lovable to test assumptions, refine flows, and validate the product direction with users
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Ideation focused on reducing uncertainty, improving decision speed, and building trust across all three user types.
Shift cards were designed to surface pay, location, and shop expectations at a glance so barbers could evaluate opportunities without opening every listing.
This reduced time to decision by allowing barbers to scan multiple opportunities without opening each listing.
I tested Apply for a Chair vs Book Shift and landed on language that aligned with trust and commitment expectations across barbers and shop owners.
Language was optimized to reflect commitment level and reduce uncertainty before applying or booking, especially for short term shifts.
Verified profiles, shop ratings, and clear requirements were prioritized early in the flow to reduce hesitation before applying or booking.
Surfacing trust early reduced hesitation and drop off before application and booking.
These decisions created a scalable foundation that supported trust, clarity, and future marketplace features.
Users tested the full marketplace flow with the Lovable prototype, focusing on discovery, application, and booking tasks across all three user types.
• Easily posted requests without confusion
• Trusted verified stylist profiles
• Understood shift expectations before booking
• Loved location and pay filters
• Found shift cards intuitive without guidance
• Completed applications independently
• 100% task completion across key flows
• No critical friction identified
• Design direction validated prior to development
Users tested the full marketplace flow with the Lovable prototype, focusing on discovery, application, and booking tasks across all three user types.
Everything was packaged in a clean, mobile-first experience.
Although pre-launch, the project achieved:
• Validated core marketplace flows across barbers, shop owners, and clients
• Demonstrated high trust and clarity during user testing
• Drove strong stakeholder alignment around the MVP direction
• Established a scalable foundation for future features, including chat, reviews, payments, and scheduling
With initial funding secured, the next phase focuses on scaling PILO into a fully operational marketplace:
• Build a web platform for shop owners to manage listings and operations at scale
• Refine the mobile experience for barbers and clients to improve speed, trust, and usability
• Expand core marketplace features, including payments, reviews, and scheduling
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© 2026 Dandrew Merriweather | Designed + Built by Dandrew
