Attrimo

The affiliate-tracking category is functionally capable and visually stuck — heavy sidebars, dense tables, low contrast, and everything weighted the same so nothing stands out. The brief was a proprietary platform that did the same job but felt modern, fast, and visually confident.

The rule the whole dashboard runs on: every metric is paired with something that tells you whether it is good or bad — a trend, a benchmark, a comparison. A number on its own makes an advertiser hunt for meaning. A number with its context answers the question on sight.

Designed end to end from a written brief with no prior designs: information architecture, user flows, the dashboard, campaign creation, reports, the publisher directory, and a component library engineering could build from and extend.

Every tool in this category runs heavy sidebars, dense tables and low contrast, and there was pushback to match that — make it feel fuller, more data-heavy. I argued the other way. A lighter v1 could ship faster and get in front of people who already use comparable products, and their behaviour would tell us where density was actually needed. Adding weight later from evidence is cheap; removing it after you’ve built the whole thing around it isn’t.

The advertiser is the single, well-defined user — time-poor, scanning for spend, conversions, and ROI. Every layout and hierarchy decision could be optimised for one mental model instead of hedged across many.

Attrimo reached internal testing. The company ran out of money before an external launch, and the backend was later retired. No analytics were in place, so the honest note is what I would measure: whether engineering extended the component library without coming back, and how much of the dashboard shipped as it was drawn.