Unrooted
Travel light. Rent locally. Connect globally.
Apr 2024 - Ongoing
Unrooted is a peer-to-peer rental marketplace for digital nomads and adventure travellers, rent clothing and gear from locals at your destination instead of buying it, overpacking it, or hauling it across the world.
SERVICES
Founder, Product Strategy, Visual Design, UX/UI, Branding
Problem
Every trip starts with the same scramble: buy the jacket, the adapter, the camera, a second monitor for the month working abroad. You use each thing a handful of times, then bin it or drag it home. It's expensive, it's heavy, and it's wasteful.
The fashion industry alone makes about 100 billion garments a year – and roughly 92 million tonnes end up in landfill. Only around a fifth of textiles are reused or recycled globally. Travellers add to that every time they buy clothing and gear for a single trip.
Meanwhile, the things a traveller needs usually already exist a few streets away – owned by locals, sitting unused. The rental never happens because there's no easy, trusted way to connect the two sides. The challenge: let travellers rent what they need from people nearby, and let locals earn from what they already own — without it feeling like work for either side.
Approach
Exploring 3D character concepts
On both sides, the blocker was never demand - it was confidence. That meant designing the renter and owner journeys as one experience, with trust established before any transaction. I explored how digital nomads and frequent travellers prepare for trips, where existing marketplaces introduce friction, and what would genuinely make someone comfortable lending their equipment to a stranger.
I designed for the traveller who'd rather not own and the local who'd rather not risk, mapping each real objection to the moment best placed to answer it. Is this person legit? Verified owners and honest reviews. What if it breaks? Insurance on every rental. How do we agree terms? Chat before any money moves. Three principles held the work together: both sides carry equal weight, trust comes before the transaction, and the whole thing stays light - every core action in a couple of taps. If a screen didn't build confidence or cut friction, it didn't earn its place.
Process
My process was less about adding screens and more about protecting the loop - keeping the full rental journey in view for both the renter and the owner.
I framed the loop end to end - discover, request, agree, pay, use, return, review - and designed for the handoffs where one person's action becomes the other's. Then the information architecture: one app, two modes, renting and owning side by side under a single nav, so nobody needs a separate seller app. From there I built the key journeys as working flows and pressure-tested the trust moments - verification, insurance and reviews - before giving the whole thing a warm, confident visual system and packaging it into an investor-ready story designed to be handed to engineering and built.
A marketplace only works if both sides feel safe before any money moves, so I designed the trust in first, and the transaction second.
Solution
The experience revolves around five key moments: discovery, building trust, completing the rental, managing ownership, and closing the loop. The same app seamlessly supports both renting and lending, allowing people to switch roles without learning a different experience. Home opens with a personalised feed of nearby items, every listing leads with trust signals such as verified owners, insurance and reviews, and renting flows naturally from conversation to secure in-app payment.
Owners can list equipment or post a "wanted" request in just a few taps, manage bookings, and track their earnings from the same interface. A warm cream-and-yellow visual language, paired with hand-drawn illustrations, makes borrowing valuable belongings feel welcoming and reassuring rather than purely transactional.
Product Images
Unrooted challenged me to think beyond screens. Wearing both founder and designer hats meant making product, business and UX decisions at the same time. It strengthened my belief that the best experiences come from solving the right problem first, then designing the simplest way to solve it.
OUTCOME
Unrooted evolved from an idea into a complete product vision, bringing together research, product strategy, branding and high-fidelity design. Every core journey was designed end to end, creating a marketplace experience that feels trustworthy, simple and ready to be taken into development.
Designing Unrooted meant thinking far beyond the interface. As both founder and product designer, I shaped the product from the ground up - defining the marketplace model, validating the concept with users, designing the brand, and creating a scalable experience that works equally well for renters and owners.
The project became an opportunity to practise end-to-end product thinking rather than just UI design. It strengthened my ability to balance user needs with business goals, simplify complex marketplace interactions, and make strategic design decisions without relying on an established product team. Although Unrooted has not yet been developed, it remains an active product vision and demonstrates how I approach building products from first principles - from identifying a real problem through to a complete, implementation-ready experience.
audience engagement
satisfaction rate improved
