Case Study · 2025 — Present
Live Product ↗Cakely
Building an AI-native social gifting platform where payments become meaningful celebrations.
Founder-led product development across strategy, UX, brand, AI-assisted development, and shipping.
Role
- Founder
- Senior Product Designer
- AI Product Builder
Timeline
- 2025 — Present
Platform
- Consumer Web App
- Host Dashboard
- Stripe Connect
Scope
- Product Strategy
- UX Research
- Interaction Design
- UI Design
- Design System
- Frontend Development
- Growth Experiments
- Founder Operations
AI Development Stack
- Claude Code
- Lovable
- ChatGPT
- Gemini
01 — Overview
A social gifting platform built around celebrations.
Cakely turns group gifting into a shared digital celebration. A host creates an event, friends are invited with one link, everyone contributes, and the moment — not the transaction — sits at the center.
Rather than a faster way to move money, Cakely is the emotional layer around it: the reason people show up, give, and remember.
- Create
- Invite
- Contribute
- Celebrate
- Receive
Maya's 30th
Sat · Jun 14
Welcome baby Theo
Next month
Farewell, Dana
Fri · this week
02 — The Opportunity
Money transfer is efficient. Celebration is emotional.
A payment app optimizes the shortest path from sender to recipient. A celebration is the opposite: it is the people, the anticipation, and the shared moment that make giving feel worth it.
Traditional payment
- Sender
- Payment
- Recipient
Cakely
- Host
- Celebration
- Friends
- Shared gifts
- Shared moment
The opportunity was not to build another payment interface. It was to design the emotional layer around the transaction.
03 — Product Strategy
Three product principles shaped the experience.
01
Celebrate, not transact.
People don't enjoy asking for money. The experience keeps the celebration at the center of attention.
02
Trust before transaction.
Money introduces hesitation. Trust signals appear throughout the experience — not on one page.
03
Sharing is the growth engine.
Every celebration naturally creates a reason to invite others.
- Celebrate
- Share
- Give
- Celebrate together
↺ a continuous loop
04 — Building the Experience
From an idea to a live celebration in minutes.
Event creation is the moment that matters most. Early versions asked for too much information before users understood the value.
The redesigned flow establishes the celebration first — a name, a photo, a date — then layers in details only when they’re needed.
- Event type
- Cover photo
- Date
- Details
- Invite friends
- Share
05 — Designing for Trust
Trust isn't a feature. It's a feeling built across the journey.
When money is involved, every screen quietly asks the user to keep going. Reassurance had to live in the whole journey, not a single security page.
- Discover
- Create
- Share
- Contribute
- Checkout
- Confirm
- Payout
“What is this?”
“Who created it?”
“Where is my money going?”
“Is this secure?”
“Did my gift go through?”
“What happens next?”
Stripe-powered infrastructure provides the security layer. The product experience provides the confidence layer.
06 — Host Experience
The operational side of celebration.
The Host Operations Dashboard is where a celebration is run — invitations, gift progress, guest participation, activity, pending actions, and payout status, in one place.
Host dashboard
Maya’s 30th
$340
of a $500 celebration goal
14 guests · 9 gave
Recent activity
Priya sent a gift
2hSam joined & left a note
5hNoah sent a gift
1d2
Active events
1
Pending actions
64%
Guest participation
Hosts think “how is my celebration going?” — not “what are my transaction metrics?” So it leads with celebration progress and keeps the financial detail one tap away.
07 — Party Mode
Turn the room into a shared gifting moment.
During in-person celebrations, the host puts a QR code on a shared screen. Guests scan, contribute, and immediately become part of the celebration.
The payment is no longer a private action on a phone. It becomes part of the moment happening in the room.
- Host
- Display QR
- Guest scans
- Stripe checkout
- Gift sent
- Live celebration
08 — AI-Native Product Development
AI accelerated the build. Product thinking drove the decisions.
Strategy & research
- — Product framing
- — Market research
- — Competitive analysis
- — Information architecture
Prototype & validate
- — Rapid prototyping
- — UI exploration
- — User flows
- — Concept validation
Build & ship
- — Frontend implementation
- — Debugging
- — Refactoring
- — Stripe integration
Iterate
- — Product critique
- — UX refinement
- — Technical iteration
- — Growth experiments
AI did not replace product thinking. It compressed the distance between an idea, a prototype, and a live product.
09 — Growth
Every celebration is a potential distribution surface.
Growth was designed into the product, not bolted on. Each of these is a real place people meet Cakely for the first time.
Shareable event pages
Invite loops
Party Mode
Explore
Content
- Create
- Share
- Join
- Contribute
- Discover Cakely
- Create
↺ a continuous loop
10 — Brand & Design System
A flexible system built for every kind of celebration.
Cakely’s brand and product system brings together identity, foundations, components, and reusable patterns — creating a consistent experience across birthdays, weddings, baby showers, and send-offs.
Brand Foundations
Wordmark · Color · Typography · Voice · Iconography
Product System
Tokens · Components · Patterns · Celebration templates
11 — Founder Perspective
Designed, built, shipped, and continuously improved.
Cakely was not simply a design project. It was:
A product to define.
A brand to shape.
A system to build.
A business to validate.
A product to continuously ship.
- Research
- Decide
- Design
- Build
- Ship
- Learn
- Repeat
↺ a continuous loop
12 — Outcomes
From a single idea to a connected product ecosystem.
Consumer platform
The celebration-first product surface.
Host dashboard
The operational center for a celebration.
Stripe Connect
Secure onboarding and payouts.
Invite system
One link to share anywhere.
Explore
Public celebrations seed discovery.
Party Mode
In-person, QR-driven gifting.
Trust layer
Reassurance across the whole journey.
Design system
Warm, flexible, celebration-ready.
Responsive web app
Built mobile-first.
13 — Reflection
Designing payments is about more than moving money.
People don’t celebrate because a transaction succeeds. They celebrate because:
- Someone remembered.
- Friends showed up.
- People contributed.
- A moment was shared.
“The most valuable product isn’t the payment itself. It’s the confidence and connection people feel when celebrating together.”
Avigail Kim · Founder & Senior Product Designer