Connectd

2024

Lead product designer · Sole designer

A marketplace matching startups with advisors and fractional leaders. Founders were signing up, then leaving.

InterviewsSynthesisMarketplace strategyOnboarding

connectd.co >

Impact

$7M

raised by Connectd in July 2025, after the redesign, in a round led by AnkerSource: Vestbee

54+

interviews across investors, advisors and founders

The problem

Connectd served three groups: startups, advisors and investors. Founders signed up, then left soon after.

What I did

I interviewed every investor on the platform, 20 advisors and 34 founders, to find out why.

What I found

Founders chased investors for funding, when what they needed first was advisory support to become investment-ready.
Investors saw value in the advisor match but wouldn't join a platform. As one put it: "I don't really feel I need another platform for that."
Advisors, the paying users, saw very little demand from startups.

The decision

I convinced the founder to drop investors and focus on startups and advisors. Then I designed founder education and advisor education, so both sides understood the value from the first screen.

Founders didn't know how advisors could help, so they didn't know what to ask for.
Founders chased investors for funding instead of the advisory support that would make their business investment-ready.
Investors were swamped and didn't reply. They didn't need another platform.
Founders left disappointed soon after signing up.
Advisors, the paying users, saw very little demand from startups.

Founder education: founders arrive knowing what an advisor can do and what to ask for.
Advisor education: advisors show what they can do for a startup, so value is clear at a glance.
A strong advisory bench makes a startup more interesting to investors, who meet them outside the platform.
Founders stay: onboarding becomes the start of retention.

Frictions before, value after

Advisors presented by what they've helped startups achieve

Connectd founder dashboard with three first actions

Every new founder starts with three clear actions

Press

Vestbee: Connectd raises $7M Scommerce: Connectd raises £5.5m

Next: Oia →

Oia

2025

Lead designer, researcher and strategist

People planning a cosmetic treatment spend weeks lost in research they can't judge. I set out to understand where those journeys go wrong, then designed a service where an AI concierge, Oia, carries the patient safely from first question to recovery.

Generative researchService designConversation designPrototypingAI product

heyoia.com >

Impact

3,000

users who have transacted with OiaSource: Oia platform data, November 2026

30+

patients and surgeons interviewed and iterated with

Growing

now expanding from cosmetic treatments into longevityheyoia.com

The problem

Planning a cosmetic treatment means comparing clinics across countries, prices that hide extras, and before and after photos nobody can verify. When it goes wrong, it really matters: the wrong treatment, the wrong surgeon, or no one looking after you once you fly home.

What I did

I spoke with more than 30 patients and surgeons, from people considering treatment to people recovering from it, and mapped the journey from first search to full recovery to see where trust breaks.

What I found

People don't want more options. They want to trust one.
Most don't know which treatment they need. They know what bothers them.
Photos only help when they're like for like: results on people like them, from that surgeon.

The decision

Make the conversation the whole product. Oia starts from the person's concern, matches on verified results rather than paid placement, explains every match, and never makes a medical call. A person reviews every shortlist.

Talk, match, travel: the whole journey in one conversation

What I learned

I designed the screens first and fitted Oia's words in afterwards, and it felt bolted on. For an AI agent, the dialogue is the design. Now I script the conversation first and treat Oia's voice and limits like a design system.

Concept: virtual clinic visit

Next: Journey Fertility →

Journey Fertility

2025 to now

Lead designer, researcher and strategist

Every fertility story is a journey, and women know this better than anyone. Most begin it alone, late at night, with a search bar and a lot of questions. I set out to understand that journey before designing anything for it.

User interviewsObservationNeeds-based segmentationInformation architectureBrand

journeyfertility.com >

Impact

women going through IVF interviewed, alongside women planning to freeze eggs or embryos

500+

verified clinics worldwide in one search, with the true all-in pricejourneyfertility.com

Live

at journeyfertility.com

The problem

Women's health is underfunded and under-researched, and fertility is where that gap is felt most. Women make some of the most expensive, life-shaping decisions they will ever make with very little clear information.

Prices swing between clinics and countries, the real total hides behind a "from" price, and every route, from a hormone test to IVF, sits in its own corner of the web. So the research happens at midnight: forums, pushy discovery calls, half-finished spreadsheets.

What I did

I spoke with 53 women going through IVF, and with women planning to freeze their eggs or embryos: different ages, lifestyles, decisions and reasons. I listened to how each of them started looking, where they got stuck, and what finally made them trust an answer.

I watched how people used early versions of the search, mapped the route from first worry to first booking, and took clinic prices apart into the medication, scans and storage fees that only appear at the end.

What I found

Most women act on very little data. Fertility rarely comes up until something goes wrong. Many only start looking when they hit a wall, and that is often when they realise the best time to freeze their eggs has already passed.
Everyone arrives at a different moment. Someone curious about her hormones, someone weighing egg freezing and someone starting IVF need completely different first steps, yet every service greets them with the same menu.
Hidden costs break trust. A tidy "from" price becomes a very different total once everything is added.
Filters assume you already know the words. In early versions, people stalled in front of a wall of filters.

The decision

Start from where she is, not from what clinics sell. The search opens with one plain, human question, "where are you right now?", then shows every option side by side with the true all-in cost, at home or abroad, before she ever picks up the phone.

Hormone test search on web, options compared side by side

One calm search instead of ten anxious browser tabs

Journey Fertility on mobile: compare at-home hormone kits and clinic checks with the true all-in price

Kits and clinic checks side by side, with the all-in price

A warm brand in a category that feels clinical

What I learned

Depth before breadth. I tried to hold all four routes in one view too soon. Proving the loop on one route first earns trust faster.
Honesty includes uncertainty. Real prices are messy, so costs show as clearly labelled estimates rather than false precision.
Warmth needs a backbone. The tone holds the feeling; the numbers hold the trust.

Next: Agatha →

Agatha

2026

Founder · Research and product

Doctors see women's symptoms in pieces, one specialty at a time. Agatha gives her a one-minute daily voice log that becomes one timeline she can take to her GP.

DiscoveryCompetitor researchService designVoice

Impact

Restarted

scope refocused on the daily log and GP summary after research

structured research with EDS patients before a closed beta

The moment it turnedTwo real cases, including my own family's

The pattern was in the data all along. Nobody held the whole timeline.

What it changed: the product is the daily log and the GP summary. Research comes later, and only by choice.

My approach

Competitor research showed voice logging alone isn't a differentiator. Agatha's edge is personal trials and a GP-ready summary checked against NHS guidance.
Conversations with people with complex conditions: they're exhausted, and they already run informal trials. So the log is voice only, about a minute.
Hard lines: never diagnose, never recommend, every pattern shown as "a pattern to watch, not proof".

What I got wrong: my first prototype led with community research. I restarted with the daily log first. Next: structured research with EDS patients before a closed beta.

Agatha concept screens: Agatha calls for a one-minute voice log, a cycle pattern view marked as a pattern to watch, a personal caffeine trial, and a one-page summary for the GP

Concept screens after the restart: log by voice, see the pattern, test your own idea, take it to your GP · illustrative data

Next: The Bury →

The Bury

2026 · Work in progress, opening 2027

Founder · Research, service and business strategy

A family members' club for Chiltern families, set on a 1712 estate in Chesham Old Town. Instead of designing it and selling it, I'm designing it with the families who will use it, and their answers have reshaped the plan.

Participatory designService designBusiness strategyProposition testing

Founding families letter >

Impact

100/100

founding places claimed before there was anything to seeSource: founding families letter

90 → 900+

families registered, September to October 2026

pillars, synthesised from families' answers, now shaping every space

Concept visualisation: families on the lawn, the 1712 manor reflected in its lake

Concept render · The Bury, from across its lake

The moment it turnedListening to founding families

The more we listened, the clearer it became: we didn't need a longer list of rooms. We needed a philosophy strong enough to shape every space.

What it changed: the whole club is now organised under four pillars, calm, curiosity, creativity and courage, and every space has to earn its place under one of them.

The challenge

Family clubs are usually planned around facilities: a pool, a gym, a soft play. Parents' weeks are planned around everything else: school runs, work, childcare and the gaps between them. Most local options split the family up.

The question was what a club would look like if it started from a family's real week, and whether enough families would commit to it before there was anything to see.

My approach

I tested the proposition before building anything. I approached 400 local families, screened for children under 12, and offered 100 founding places. Then I kept the founding families in the design process rather than treating them as customers:

Their answers changed the plan. Ideas families asked for, like a lakeside sauna, tree houses, an astronomy rooftop and an eco-garden with hens, are now in it, marked "new" so they can see their influence.
I synthesised a philosophy, not a feature list. Calm comes first, because nobody dares when they're exhausted. Then curiosity, creativity and courage: a place where parents become beginners again and children watch them try.
I put real decisions to them. Families vote on which library their children would explore more freely, and describe what a good working day here looks like before the co-working space is finalised.

The library became the connective tissue of the house: quiet, chatty and playful corners side by side, two heights everywhere so a child can reach what a child may touch, and sightlines instead of walls so a child can always find a parent's face.

App concept, three screens: the family's upcoming bookings, booking classes and spaces, and the swap shop for outgrown books, toys and clothes

App concept · one family's week, booking for everyone, and the swap shop

App concept, Plan screen: one family's Wednesday, with a parent's yoga class, a toddler's crèche session with a nutrition note, a booked call booth, family lunch, a child's pottery class, and tomorrow's storytelling event

Scroll the screen to see a whole family's day

App concept · Plan: one day, every family member, in one place

Concept visualisation: the Stables courtyard alive with climbing and play

Concept render · The Stables and crash gym

Concept visualisation: the panelled adults-only drawing room and co-working space

Concept render · The Drawing Room and co-working

What I built

The service model. Soft play and a crash gym, crèche and kids' classes for 0 to 12; co-working, studio classes and wellness for parents; a family kitchen, café and grounds for everyone.
The membership and business model. Adult and child memberships, plus a founding membership that stays with families as their children grow.
The free Bury app. Booking for every family member in one place, plus a swap shop for books, toys and pre-loved clothes, built while the estate takes shape.
A way of designing with members. A founding families letter, regular updates and open questions, so the people who will use the club keep shaping it.

What changed along the way: after a fire at the main house, we had to start again from the ground up. Rather than rebuild the old plan, I used it to step back and give the club a philosophy, shaped by what families had told us.

Next: A game for Mum →

A game for Mum

2026

Personal project · Health

My mum has Parkinson's and needs to move more every day. A game she used to love turned out to be the way in. This is how one game for one person became four, and the start of a support site for others like her.

Observational researchIterative prototypingAccessibilityHealth

mum.magnaven.com >

Impact

movement games built, each around a different exercisePlay Glimmer

PDkin

a planned non-profit for people with Parkinson's and carers, UK and Turkey

The moment it turnedRemembering what she used to enjoy

Exercise felt like a chore. A game she already loved felt like hers.

What it changed: hide the exercise inside the game, not the other way round.

The challenge

My mum is very immobile. She needs to move every day, but the exercises are repetitive, and on a hard day they're the first thing to go.

My approach

Research with a sample of one. I watched her daily exercises to see which movements she could manage and which she skipped. She used to love Bejeweled-style games, so I built on that memory instead of asking her to form a new habit. In the first game, Glimmer, you open your hand over a gem, then close it to grab.

Hand tracking: an open hand reaches for a gem

Three more games

Each one takes on a different movement. All run in a normal browser with a webcam, in English and Turkish, and the camera picture never leaves the computer.

Mural: a painting game made of light, played with the hand or a gentle turn of the head

Mural · paint with your hand or head · mural.magnaven.com

Slow, small or shaky movements all paint beautifully. No timer, nothing can go wrong.

Soft Bloom: water your trees with gentle arm movements

Soft Bloom · arms up and out · bloom.magnaven.com

Gentle arm raises water a garden, with breathing and voice built in.

Zest: a gentle balloon-popping game played with a wave of the hand

Zest · wave, shout, raise your eyebrows · zest.magnaven.com

Hand waves, voice and facial movement, in short, lively bursts.

What I built

Four games and the start of PDkin, a planned non-profit for people with Parkinson's and their carers in the UK and Turkey.

What I learned: designing for one person forces you to be specific. Every choice had to fit her hands, her energy and her memories, and that is what made it useful to others.

Why this matters to meCuriosity, creativity and courage

How do people keep moving forward when the odds, the statistics and the people around them say they won't?

I'm researching that question alongside my work. I see two kinds of courage. One says "if they did it, I can too". The other keeps going against the odds without following everyone else: not giving up, resting when tired, then carrying on.

Building for my mum taught me the second kind. It's also how I design: for the people on the edges of the data, who need a reason to keep going more than a perfect average.

Next: Magpie →

Magpie

2026 · Live

Founder · Research method and service design

Most founders never properly define their early adopters, so they build for whoever is willing to talk. Magpie is my research method for finding the people who need a product now, interviewing them well, and turning them into its first advocates.

Early adopter researchAI interviewingSynthesisService design

magpie.magnaven.com >

Impact

Live

as a research service for start-ups and scale-upsmagpie.magnaven.com

20 to 30

early adopter interviews in a four-week study

outputs a team can act on: a scored shortlist, tagged transcripts, a priority report and an advocate plan

Magpie website: Find the people who need your product now

magpie.magnaven.com

The problem

Early teams hear from whoever replies first, not from the people who need the product most. Focus groups add noise, and polite feedback hides the real need. Getting this wrong can cost a whole funding round.

What I did

I grounded the method in forty years of innovation research, from Rogers' diffusion of innovations to lead-user studies, and in my own work at Connectd and Oia. Then I turned the way I run research into four repeatable stages, with an AI interviewer doing the part that doesn't scale.

Why early adopters, not focus groups: a small group of about one in seven buyers sets the pace

The evidence behind the method

What I found

People don't always say what they mean. They give a confident answer that isn't quite true, or ask for a solution when what they have is a need. The interviewer has to ask the next question.
Early adopters are different. They live with the problem today and can describe it in depth, but their insight rarely arrives as a neat sentence.
One round of interviews isn't enough. The value comes from staying close as the product changes.

The decision

Pair a clear human method with a trained AI interviewer that builds a profile of each early adopter, checks in at every iteration, and digs past the "faster horses" answer. It always discloses that it is AI, and nobody is quoted or named without consent.

Four stages: identify the real early adopters, interview them at scale, find the patterns, turn them into advocates

Four stages, from signal to advocacy

What a team gets: early adopter research, AI interviewing, synthesis, influence and advocacy

Research a team can act on, not a deck that sits in a drive

Next: Letterbird →

Letterbird

2026

Lead designer · Sole designer

A voice journal with no typing. Letterbird calls once a day at a time you choose, asks up to three gentle questions, and keeps what you say as a page. I designed the UI and the motion kit for the Letterbird team.

UI designMotion designHabit design

Impact

1,000

users in an invite-only MVP

70%

of users active every day

The problem

Journaling apps ask you to sit down and write, and most people stop within a week.

The decision

Take the writing away. One call a day asks the questions and turns your answers into a page, in your own words, not a transcript. If you miss it, it tries once more, then lets the day go.

Welcome, choose your questions and set the call time

Setup in three screens

Incoming call and on-call screens, animated

The call

Welcome screen and the calendar of pages

A calendar that fills as you pick up

The motion kit: bird in flight, ringing, listening, writing it down, sprig grows

Motion carries the state: ringing, listening, writing, saved

Your words, kept as pages

What I learned

Remove the hardest step instead of rewarding it. Taking the writing away does more for a daily habit than streaks or badges.
Motion carries the state. When there is almost no UI on a call, each animation has to tell you what is happening.

Next: Connectd →

Ida Dilfer

Design researcher and strategist

I talk to the people a product is for, try to understand what matters to them, and help teams make sense of what they've learned and decide what to build next.

I have a neurodivergent mind that's naturally drawn to patterns. It moves between a founder's frustration, a woman's midnight spreadsheet of fertility clinics and a parent's Saturday (these are some recent user profiles I spent time with), looking for the things that connect them. That's often where my work begins.

I've worked across health tech, fintech, AI and family products, with teams ranging from VCCP and Fidelity to early-stage start-ups. I've also built ventures of my own, starting with Tinkfabrik, a co-creation platform for sustainability that was runner-up at the MIT Business Plan Competition. Being a founder changed how I think about research. It's not just about gathering insights; it's about helping people make difficult decisions with a little more clarity.

Alongside my design work, I'm interested in curiosity, creativity and courage: what keeps people going when things get difficult, and how we learn to trust AI without losing trust in ourselves. These interests go back to being a creative kid who didn't quite fit in at school. They still influence how I approach design, particularly when working with people whose experiences aren't always reflected in the data.

I've lived and worked in London, Barcelona, San Francisco and Istanbul, and enjoy sharing what I learn through teaching. Most recently, I led a Design Research with AI workshop at NABA Milan.

idatinker@gmail.com · LinkedIn

How I work with teams

Real voices in the room. I bring the people we're designing for into every conversation, in their own words, so decisions are argued from evidence, not opinion.

Safe to say what you see. Synthesis works when everyone can share a half-formed thought. I make room for contradictions and quiet voices.

Leave aligned. Research needs a recommendation. At Connectd, one clear recommendation took the product from three sides to two.

Experience

Journey FertilityResearcher, product and brand designer · 2025 to now
OiaLead designer · 2025
ConnectdLead product designer · 2024
VCCP · Fidelity · VitalitySenior product designer · 2020 to 2023
Nexus · BBA · Koffeecup · Field.ioAgencies · 2018 to 2020
Jack MortonCreative designer · 2016 to 2018
Magna VenturesCo-founder · 2016 to now
TinkfabrikCo-founder · 2011

Education

Istanbul Technical UniversityMA, Design Strategy and Innovation · 2010 to 2012
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyEntrepreneurship Bootcamp · 2011
Politècnica de CatalunyaSustainability in Technological Innovation · 2009 to 2010
Marmara UniversityBA, Product Design · 2005 to 2009

Teaching

NABA, MilanWorkshop: Design Research with AI · 2025
General AssemblyMentor and reviewer · 2025
Istanbul Technical UniversityGuest lecturer, Interaction Design · 2018

Clients

Google · Unilever · Spotify · Facebook · IBM · Fidelity International · Mercedes-Benz

Exhibitions

Bozar Ars Electronica, BEInteractive display of Pulsations · 2020
The School of the Future, JPTokyo Midtown · 2020
Istanbul Design Biennale2 to sit · 2018

Awards

MIT Business Plan CompetitionRunner-up with Tinkfabrik · 2011
Innovative Packaging AwardKleenex compact tissue box

← Back to work

I'm a design researcher and strategist.

Connectd

Oia

Journey Fertility

Agatha

The Bury

Magpie

Letterbird

VCCP

Experiential

Connectd

Oia

Journey Fertility

Agatha

The Bury

A game for Mum

Magpie

Letterbird

Ida Dilfer

How I work with teams

Experience

Education

Teaching

Clients

Exhibitions

Awards