Case Study
Designing Placeit for Mobile: A Product Exploration
Product Design
Context
Placeit is a web-based platform that allows creators to quickly customize design templates such as mockups, logos, and promotional assets. While the product has long supported mobile usage—including browsing and editing templates—the primary design experience focus for many years was desktop.
As a result, the mobile experience was functional but not purpose-built. Core workflows existed, but they were largely inherited from desktop patterns rather than designed around mobile-first behaviors, constraints, and expectations.
This project explores what a native mobile app for Placeit could look like, focusing on fast reuse of templates, fluid interactions, and realistic system feedback.
Exploration Focus
Rather than attempting to redesign Placeit’s entire feature set for mobile, this project focused on exploration and learning.
The goal was to understand what a truly mobile-first Placeit experience could feel like—one that prioritized speed, clarity, and confidence over manual creation, allowing users to rely on pre-designed templates rather than creative decision-making.
This exploration centered on a few key questions:
How might users quickly act on intent—such as downloading, editing, or saving a template—while on the go?
How could core actions feel immediate and predictable in a touch-first environment, without exposing unnecessary complexity?
How could motion, transitions, and system feedback reinforce trust and clarity, helping users understand what is happening at every step?
Rather than producing a fully production-ready design, the outcome of this work was a set of high-fidelity, interaction-driven prototypes designed to simulate realistic usage scenarios and inform future product decisions.
Design Principles
Act on intent, not creativity
Most users arrive with a clear goal—download a design, customize a template, or save it for later. The interface prioritizes direct actions over open-ended exploration, minimizing unnecessary decisions and steps.
Reduce cognitive load through familiar patterns
Interactions rely on well-known native behaviors such as contextual action menus, bottom sheets, and touch-friendly controls. This allows users to focus on outcomes rather than learning new interaction models.
Motion as feedback, not decoration
Animations are used to communicate system state, confirm actions, and guide attention. Transitions reinforce cause and effect, helping users understand what just happened without relying on additional explanatory UI.
Progressive complexity
Advanced actions are revealed only when relevant. This keeps the core browsing experience lightweight while still supporting deeper workflows such as collection management or editing.
Leverage existing systems strategically
For the MVP, complex functionality like the template editor was intentionally accessed through a web view. This allowed the native experience to focus on discovery, interaction patterns, and feedback loops without rebuilding costly systems from scratch.
MVP Constraints & Trade-offs
This exploration was intentionally shaped by practical constraints.
Building a fully native template editor was not viable for an MVP due to technical complexity and cost. Instead, the concept assumes reuse of the existing web-based editor through a web view, allowing the native experience to focus on discovery, interaction patterns, and system feedback.
This trade-off prioritized speed to validation and reduced engineering risk, while still enabling meaningful exploration of where native interactions added the most value.
Reflections
This project reinforced the importance of prototyping interactions, not just screens when exploring new platforms.
Designing for mobile required letting go of desktop assumptions and focusing on intent, clarity, and feedback. High-fidelity prototypes proved especially valuable for testing behavior, aligning stakeholders, and evaluating feasibility before committing to development.
While not all concepts were implemented as originally envisioned, the exploration helped define a clearer direction for how Placeit could evolve on mobile.
Credits
Lead Product Design → Oliva Meg
Product Direction → Kristian Alvarado
© 2026 Oliva Meg
Designed with Figma and Published with Framer