04 / Contract product work · Spexi · 2022–2024
Aerial Rewards
Led product design for Spexi’s pilot experience across mission discovery, preflight safety, automated capture, upload verification, and rewards—turning aviation, hardware, and marketplace constraints into a guided workflow.
60-second summary
Spexi needed pilots with consumer drones to capture consistent imagery safely and repeatedly. Pilots needed to understand mission value, eligibility, flight requirements, and reward status before, during, and after each flight.
Lead Product Designer · Contract · Mobile and web
Structure the journey around pilot confidence: see where demand exists, understand the opportunity, confirm safety, supervise a standardized flight, upload imagery, and track verification and reward state.
A connected pilot journey that keeps mission value, safety requirements, capture progress, verification, and rewards visible from discovery through completion.
Contract artifact: the desktop overview connects mapped imagery demand, flight status, recent transactions, and upload actions in one operational workspace.
Decisions and system thinking
Designing the pilot side of a distributed imagery system
The interface shown here was created during a 2022–2024 contract engagement. Some screens use Spexigon and $SPEXI terminology from that period; Spexi’s current public materials describe the wider capture network as LayerDrone and rewards through USDC and Reputation Points. The original artifacts are preserved rather than rewritten as current product UI.
Make demand, eligibility, and value understandable before takeoff.
Map-based zones connect an abstract data request to a place a pilot can evaluate. Availability, reservation, location, and reward information help pilots decide where to travel and what completing the mission requires.
Translate technical standardization into a guided flight.
Preflight confirmations surface takeoff safety, local airspace, privacy, obstacles, and flight height. During capture, the automated route remains visible while the pilot supervises the aircraft and retains situational awareness.
Keep submission, verification, and rewards legible after landing.
Awaiting-upload, reserved, processing, verification-failed, and earned states communicate what has happened, what still needs attention, and when a completed flight becomes eligible for a reward.
End-to-end pilot journey
From imagery demand to a verified contribution
- 01Find an available capture zone
- 02Evaluate mission location, eligibility, and value
- 03Reserve or begin the mission
- 04Confirm airspace, takeoff safety, and flight height
- 05Supervise the standardized automated capture
- 06Upload imagery and follow verification status
- 07Receive the eligible reward and build reputation
Current shipped-product context
How Spexi presents the pilot network today
Spexi’s current public explainer demonstrates the evolved pilot proposition: fly a supported drone, capture standardized imagery, and earn rewards. It provides present-day company context rather than direct evidence of the exact contract-period interface shown above.
Present-day company evidence · 2026
Useful scale and customer signals, clearly separated from personal attribution
When this case was refreshed in 2026, Spexi reported more than 6.5 million acres imaged and published pilot feedback describing the current experience as intuitive and well structured. These are company-level, present-day signals—not launch metrics, proof of individual causality, or claims about the exact contract-period designs.
Design contribution
What I contributed across the product workflow
- Product definition and workflow framing
- Pilot research and audience segmentation
- Marketplace and incentive experience
- Safety, flight, and system-state interaction design
- Mobile and web product design
- Design leadership, prototyping, and implementation guidance