Senior Product Designer + UX Polish — Required Skills Inventory

I've built an MVP of Cribb — a household management app for couples and families. It helps them plan meals, share grocery lists, coordinate cleaning, and reduce the invisible mental load that causes household friction. The codebase is real and working. What's missing is the human design touch that turns "functional app" into "an app couples want to open every morning." The aesthetic direction is Scandi-Japandi: Olive green primary (#6B7053), cream background (#F5F1E8) Warm wood-tone accents, terracotta + mustard for warmth Fraunces (serif) for headlines, Nunito Sans (rounded sans) for body, Caveat (handwritten) for personal moments Inspired by: Aesop, Le Labo, Apartamento magazine, Things 3, Headspace's calm direction, OurPlace cookware Avoided: corporate SaaS, gamified Duolingo-style, anything that feels "productive" The full design brief (colors, type, motion, copy voice) is in a document I'll share. The visual tokens are mostly correct in the build — but the execution feels closer to "presentable" than "premium." Your job is to take it from presentable to lovely. What you'll deliver Workstream 1 — Visual polish pass (real frontend code, not Figma) I need someone who can actually go into the React + Tailwind codebase and make targeted refinements: Refine the "Tonight's meal" hero card on the home screen to feel like a beautiful Spotify album card with a real food image Audit every card, button, input, and tab for premium-quality shadows, spacing, and corner radii Source warm, natural-light food photography from Unsplash (free, commercial OK) — wire up automated image fetching by meal name as a fallback Refine the bottom tab bar to feel like Things 3 / Apple Reminders (calm, native-feeling), not like a generic mobile web wrapper Implement seven specific micro-animations (chore complete ink bloom, terracotta glow on tonight's meal, etc.) using Framer Motion Improve typography rhythm across screens — exact sizes, line heights, letter spacing per the brief Workstream 2 — Empty states + illustrations Every empty list/screen needs a warm illustration (botanical line drawings in olive: a sprig, a ceramic jar, an olive branch, a wooden spoon) I'm open to: licensing from a marketplace, commissioning ~10 spot illustrations as part of your scope, or you sourcing from open libraries (Open Doodles, unDraw, etc.) and adjusting palette to brand colors Final set: 8–12 illustrations that recur across the app Workstream 3 — Microcopy + tone of voice Review every user-facing string in the app Rewrite anything that sounds productivity-app-y ("Add task," "Overdue," "Assigned to") into the warm housemate voice ("Add to our list," "When you're ready," "Whoever's around") Reference voice: Mailchimp (historical), Patagonia, Honest Co., Stash, Headspace I'll share a 30-example microcopy library to anchor the voice Workstream 4 — App Store + Google Play marketing assets App icon (1024×1024 base, all required sizes) iPhone screenshots (6.7" + 6.5" required, ideally 5.5" too) — 5–10 screens showing real polished UI with realistic placeholder content iPad screenshots if we list for iPad (12.9", 11") Android Phone screenshots (1080×1920+) and Tablet screenshots A short, evocative App Store description (~170 chars subtitle + 4000-char full description) in the housemate voice A 30-second App Store preview video would be a stretch goal — quote separately Required experience Must have: 5+ years product/UX design experience for consumer apps You can actually write production frontend code — React + Tailwind CSS specifically. Not "I work closely with developers" — you commit code yourself. Portfolio with at least 2 launched consumer apps with strong visual identity (please share links — I will look at them) Comfortable with Framer Motion for production animations Have written App Store / Google Play screenshots and descriptions that have converted Nice to have: Background or interest in Scandi-Japandi / wabi-sabi / hygge aesthetics Experience with cozy/calm app categories (mindfulness, journaling, home, recipe apps) Custom illustration ability — even if simple line work Experience with cross-cultural microcopy (US/UK/Canada/EU English nuance) Strong signal of fit: Your own portfolio site feels warm and considered, not corporate-portfolio-y You can point to a single decision you made on a previous project that improved retention by feeling "more human" You have an opinion about typography hierarchy and can defend it What you DON'T need to do Major engineering work — bugs, API integration, deployment (separate engineer is handling that) App Store submission process (engineer handles) New feature design beyond what's spec'd Backend or database work How I work / how I'd like you to work I'm non-technical but design-literate. I have strong instincts about feel; I'll trust your specifics on execution. I want brutally honest pushback. If my aesthetic direction is wrong in some specific way, tell me. If a screenshot isn't going to convert, say so. Updates: a short async update at end of each working day. One 30-min video call per week to align. Working method: pull requests against the existing repo with screenshots in each PR description. Or, for screenshot/asset work, a shared Figma file. Payment: 30% upfront, 30% at midpoint, 40% on final deliverables. Through Upwork escrow or equivalent. How to apply In your application, please answer these in order. Generic applications get ignored: Send me 2 links to live consumer apps you've designed and that you helped write the frontend code for. Tell me your specific role. Show me your warmest piece of work — a screenshot, a Dribbble shot, anything that makes the case you can do this aesthetic. What's your single strongest opinion about microcopy in consumer apps? What's your honest time estimate for the four workstreams above? Realistic over impressive. One question about the project that would meaningfully change how you'd approach it.