A crisis-response marketplace giving communities in Lebanon and similar economies a free platform to monetize their work, access affordable food, and receive financial support that reaches those who need it.
Every metric below was achieved in pre-launch phase — before Nazzela opened to the public.
After the 2019 financial crisis, Lebanon's banking system froze. People lost access to their savings overnight. Unemployment surged, and the official exchange rate became disconnected from reality — making standard international transfers nearly useless.
Yet people kept working. Freelancers, small traders, local craftspeople — informal economic activity kept communities alive. The problem was visibility and access. There was no platform built for this reality.
Citizens lost trust in formal financial systems. Cash and informal exchange became the norm, creating fragmented, hard-to-reach markets.
Skilled people with valuable services had no way to reach customers at scale — especially outside their immediate neighborhood.
Lebanese abroad wanted to send support, but bank transfers were lossy — money often didn't reach food. There was no controlled way to give.
Essential goods were increasingly expensive or unavailable in formal retail. Distributed local sellers had no shared storefront.
I joined as the sole designer and took ownership beyond the screen. In a lean team with only developers and a sales unit, I covered every layer of the product — from understanding users to shaping how the business model works.
Before committing to the full product direction, we conducted discovery interviews with freelancers, small business owners, and service providers in Lebanon. We wanted to verify that the proposed solution mapped to real pain — and the response was clear.
* Quotes are representative of real sentiment gathered during early discovery conversations with potential users.
The challenge was building something rich enough to solve multiple interconnected problems — without creating something overwhelming. Every feature had to feel like it belonged.
Users can list services and goods and discover what's available around them — not just as a list, but spatially on a map. Think Airbnb's search, applied to your local economy.
Map search wasn't just aesthetic — it builds trust. Knowing a provider is nearby increases confidence they can deliver quickly. It also surfaces opportunities people didn't know existed in their village or neighborhood.
A dedicated section for affordable essential food, fulfilled through a network of local small businesses acting as pickup points — bringing customers to their doors while giving people access to affordable goods.
Small businesses who host shelves get new foot traffic — a mutual benefit. We're not competing with them, we're a marketing channel. This created early buy-in from 13K+ businesses before launch.
Lebanese diaspora can purchase gift cards specifically redeemable for food in the marketplace. The value goes directly to essentials — bypassing broken bank transfers and ensuring the support lands where it's meant to.
Many donors abroad worry their money is misused. By restricting gift cards to food purchases, we gave donors control and confidence — making giving more likely, more frequent, and more meaningful.
Users earn NAT tokens for sharing the app and growing the community. Tokens can be used to purchase food in the marketplace, creating a circular local economy loop that rewards participation.
Growth through word-of-mouth in Lebanon is high-trust. NAT turns every user into a potential advocate, and spending tokens on food keeps the value circulating within the ecosystem rather than cashing out.
Starting with only a logo and three brand colors, I developed the full design language — typography, components, spacing, states — and applied it across every screen in the app.
Map view + category navigation
Proximity listings with filters
Service or goods profile page
Essential goods, pickup locations
Diaspora giving flow
Earn, track, and spend tokens
← Replace placeholders with final app screens →
Rich apps require hard tradeoffs. These are the three decisions that shaped Nazzela most — and why we made them.
Most marketplaces default to filtered lists. We added a map layer as the primary discovery mode.
Filter-based lists are familiar and fast for urban users — but they assume people know what's available and where. In rural Lebanon, that assumption breaks down.
A map reveals what's possible. Someone in a remote village can see three mechanics within 2km they never knew existed. Proximity also signals availability and trust — a nearby provider can arrive faster.
We could have given donors more flexibility. We deliberately didn't.
Open monetary gifts or general vouchers give recipients more freedom — but they give donors less confidence. When donors can't see where money goes, they often don't give at all.
Restricting gift cards to food purchases is a trust mechanism. It removes the donor's doubt — their support goes exactly where they intend. This increases the likelihood of giving and makes Nazzela a preferred channel over bank transfers.
Four features, multiple user types, one coherent app. The hardest UX challenge.
Nazzela serves buyers, sellers, service providers, donors, and future token users — all in one interface. Too much complexity and the core use case gets buried.
Modular navigation with a clear primary action per context. Each feature accessible without understanding the others. Users land in their mode and depth is optional — exploration is rewarded, not required.
One of the most meaningful things I designed for Nazzela wasn't a screen — it was an economic mechanism. Working with the context of active NGOs and international donors in crisis regions, I designed a purpose-driven time-donation model that multiplies the value of every contribution.
The logic: donors want their contribution to matter. By restricting funds to specific activities and doubling the value when contributors reinvest in themselves through advertising, Nazzela makes every dollar work harder — while growing the platform ecosystem at the same time.
The NAT reward infrastructure is already active in the app. The Nazzela team can request services and distribute rewards manually today.
Donors shown the purpose-donation model confirmed readiness to participate. The concept was positively received before public launch.
The end state — where a donor selects a purpose and everything flows automatically — is designed and documented. Automation is the next build milestone.
Raised based on the shipped product and the presentations I designed and built — before public launch.
Businesses and individual listings registered by the early sales team, drawn in by the product's value proposition.
App is fully developed and scaled on AWS servers — in production, awaiting official public launch following a pause due to the conflict in Lebanon.
Founder, investors, and early business partners expressed strong satisfaction. Small business owners — particularly low-income ones — responded enthusiastically to the shelf model and free access.
Beyond what's shipped, I led deep research into the next phase of Nazzela — a crypto-backed token layer that would turn NAT into a real transferable asset on the blockchain, enabling value exchange across borders without banking infrastructure.
The research phase covered:
Technical research into making NAT a live crypto token — enabling peer-to-peer value transfer without banks, at the real market rate.
Co-authored a draft whitepaper outlining the token's economic model, utility within the platform, and roadmap to decentralization.
Designed a mechanism where abroad donors fund healthy community activities — food programs, skill-building — through the token, with transparent on-chain accountability.
The long-term vision: a single platform where selling, buying food, earning tokens, receiving support, and transferring value are all interconnected — and accessible without a bank account.