Product Designer Needed for Customer Dashboard / Sports Collectibles Portal

WeTheHobby is building a customer portal for sports card collectors who participate in live breaks. We recently launched the first version of our Hit Viewer, where customers can log in, connect their Fanatics Live account, view the cards they hit in breaks, and choose next actions like consigning, grading, buyback, pre-grading, or shipping. The product is live, functional, and being used by real customers. The current version was built quickly by engineering and solves the core workflow, but it still feels too “engineery.” We are looking for an experienced contract product designer to help us rethink the experience from a customer-first perspective and make it feel polished, trustworthy, intuitive, and scalable. This is not a request to simply evaluate the current workflow and optimize the existing screens. We want a designer who will step back, research comparable products, understand the collector/customer journey, and propose a stronger product experience. ----- What We’re Building ----- The current product allows customers to: - Create or log into a WTH account - Connect and verify their Fanatics Live account - View cards they hit in live breaks - Review card images and card details - Choose actions for each card: consign, grade, pre-grade, request buyback, ship - Understand what to do if cards are missing or details look incorrect The product will expand into a broader card management experience where customers can manage their collection, track actionable cards, update platform connections, and eventually manage workflows like consignment, grading, buybacks, and shipping directly in-app. ----- What We've Learned Since Launch ----- Now that the product is live, a few needs have become clearer: - Some users already have large card counts, including 50+ cards. - We need to distinguish between: - My Collection: cards the customer owns or has hit historically - Actionable Cards: cards that still need a decision, such as consign, grade, etc - Customers need basic card management, such as hiding, archiving, or marking cards as resolved after selling, shipping, or taking action. - Platform connection management is going to be important for scale. Customers can change usernames, requiring a re-verification. - Empty states, errors, trust messaging, and account connection flows need to feel more polished and less technical. - The experience needs better hierarchy so customers understand what they won, what needs attention, and what to do next. ----- What We Need Help With ----- We need a product designer to help rethink and redesign the full customer experience, including: - Hit viewer / “My Hits” dashboard - Collection vs actionable card experience - Card list and card detail layouts - Data hierarchy and information architecture - States: empty, error, loading - Onboarding flow - Connected account flow - Username change / re-verification experience - CTA/action hierarchy - Basic card management patterns - Mobile-responsive layouts - Visual polish and interaction states We are especially interested in someone who can think beyond pixels. We do not just want visual polish on the current screens. We want someone who can help simplify the customer journey, rethink the dashboard structure, and create a design direction that can scale as the product grows. ----- Research Expectations ----- We want this engagement to include product and competitive research, not just UI production. The designer should look at relevant experiences across: - Sports card and collectibles platforms - Marketplace dashboards - Consignment workflows - Grading / vault / collection management products - Ecommerce order management - Customer account portals - Asset management or portfolio-style dashboards Examples may include products in or adjacent to collectibles, grading, marketplaces, resale, fintech, gaming inventory, and customer asset tracking. The goal is not to copy competitors, but to understand strong patterns for: - Managing many owned items - Separating active/actionable items from historical collection items - Building trust around ownership and status - Helping customers choose next-best actions - Handling verification and account connection - Designing dashboards that scale from a few items to many We want someone who can bring outside perspective and propose a modern direction, not someone who only evaluates our current workflow and makes incremental improvements. ----- Design Goals ----- The experience should feel: - Simple and trustworthy - Premium but not overdesigned - Customer-friendly, not admin-like - Clear for users who may not be highly technical - Optimized for customers with both a few cards and many cards - Easy for customers to understand what needs action - Fast to ship and practical for engineering to implement - Scalable into workflows like consignment, grading, buybacks, shipping, and collection management We want to avoid over-designing. This is an MVP that needs to look professional, communicate clearly, and scale into future workflows. ----- Ideal Candidate ----- You are a strong fit if you have experience with: - B2C dashboards or customer portals - Marketplace, ecommerce, collectibles, gaming, or sports products - Designing customer-facing account or asset management experiences - Researching comparable products and translating patterns into practical product direction - Improving engineer-built MVPs without being constrained by the original UI - Designing clear information hierarchy for complex data - Figma - Responsive web design - Practical design systems - Working quickly with product and engineering teams Bonus if you understand sports cards, collectibles, live commerce, or marketplace workflows, but that is not required. ----- Deliverables ----- Expected deliverables may include: - Brief competitive / pattern research summary - Recommended product experience direction - Redesigned Figma concepts for the Hit Viewer dashboard - Improved information architecture for: - My Collection - Actionable Cards - Card detail views - Connected accounts - Desktop and mobile layouts - Improved onboarding and Fanatics Live account connection screens - Platform connection management flows - Re-verification / username change flow - Card management concepts, such as hide, archive, remove, or resolved states - Empty, error, and loading states - CTA/action hierarchy recommendations - Component recommendations - Optional clickable prototype - Notes for engineering implementation We can provide screenshots of the current product, brand direction, product context, customer learnings, and current workflow constraints. ----- Timeline ----- We are looking to move quickly. Ideally, we would like initial design recommendations within a few days, followed by polished designs over 1–2 weeks. We are open to continuing the engagement if the initial work is strong. ----- To Apply ----- Please include: - Relevant portfolio examples - Any customer dashboard, marketplace, ecommerce, collection, or account management work - Examples where you used research or competitive analysis to inform product direction Your availability over the next 1–2 weeks - A brief note on how you would approach redesigning a live engineer-built MVP without simply optimizing the existing workflow We are looking for someone practical, fast, product-minded, and able to balance customer experience, visual polish, research, and engineering feasibility.