Indra

Indra is a reciprocity platform for freelancers, newcomers, and creatives in Berlin, designed to make exchanging skills, resources, knowledge, and practical support easier. I developed the project end to end, from research and product strategy to UX/UI design and prototyping.

The challenge was to turn reciprocity, a social behavior built on trust, time, skills, and informal exchange , into a product model that could remain understandable and useful in everyday life.

Berlin attracts tens of thousands of international residents each year and is home to around 180,000 independent creative professionals, many of whom arrive without an established support community. Being away from familiar and trusted networks can make everyday access to help, resources, and practical support more difficult. Existing exchange platforms address parts of this need, but often lack continuity, clear recognition of contributions, and mechanisms that support balanced reciprocity and build trust.

I compared time banks, gift-economy platforms, and neighbourhood networks across participation, continuity, inclusivity, non-speculative exchange, and everyday usability. I then explored the concept with 25 participants from KunstCol, a network of migrant creatives in Berlin. The research showed a strong willingness to cooperate, but also revealed that communication, service exchange, knowledge sharing, and practical support were fragmented across different tools and channels, as most existing platforms focused on only one type of exchange rather than connecting these needs within a single system.

To address the gaps found in the research, I began designing key features focused on turning informal cooperation into an intuitive space for giving and receiving help. I structured the app around three core areas: discovering opportunities to contribute, tracking contributions to maintain a reciprocal balance between giving and receiving, and making participation visible over time.

I translated the system strategy into a complete user journey, mapping how users could discover a request, understand the need, offer support, complete an exchange, and see their contribution reflected in the network. Storyboards, user flows, and wireframes helped me define the interaction logic, identify friction points, and simplify the experience before moving into high-fidelity design.

Using Figma, I then designed the platform’s core end-to-end experiences: requesting help, responding to requests, messaging between users, and managing a reciprocity wallet that tracks contributions and makes participation visible over time.

After the initial usability test, I refined the design by introducing additional trust and safety mechanisms, including profile verification, clearer user information, and safeguards around interactions and exchanges. I then translated the improved flows and screens into Lovable to prototype the product logic and interactions, creating a functional foundation and development handoff for the backend implementation of the MVP.