İrem Sultan Koçak

02 / Case study · Zero-to-one product

AdSphere.

From a fragmented industry process to a structured product.

What began as a database exercise evolved into a product concept for coordinating influencer marketing campaigns — from finding partners and negotiating offers to content approval, attribution and payment logic.

Development-stage prototypeSample / test data
My focus
Product workflows & business rules
Team
2 people
Project
Graduation project · 2026
Platform
Web-based product prototype
Product logic / 001Research → Design → Validation
BrandAdSphereInfluencer

One workflow. Different incentives. Shared rules.

Development-stage interfaceCampaign offers grouped by product, with agreement progress and a counteroffer notification. Development-stage interface, not a final production release.

The problem

Influencer campaigns involve more than finding a creator.

Campaign coordination can span informal messages, spreadsheets, negotiations, creative reviews, publication checks and performance reporting. The challenge was to understand how these steps connect — and which rules would make the process more transparent for both sides.

Fragmented process
  • Messages
  • Offers
  • Approvals
  • Reporting
Structured product
  • Shared stages
  • Explicit decisions
  • Traceable actions
  • Defined responsibilities

Discovery & process mapping

We mapped the business before defining the screens.

We spent roughly a month researching campaign operations and discussing parts of the process with people familiar with the sector. The result was a multi-role workflow that helped us identify dependencies, handoffs and decision points.

End-to-end campaign workflowSimplified from the original swimlane
Brand sideManager · strategist · budget · approver
Register brand team roles
Define campaign & productsSet budget & publish to a selected pool
Review draftVerify published post
Brand payments
Shared rulesAdmin / system
Registry
Offer · one counteroffer · agreement
UTM tracking link
Eligible payout calculated
Influencer sideManager · partnerships · creator
Register influencer team roles
Choose opportunities from the poolOffer per product: sale or post price
Upload draftPublish with tracking link
Influencer payments
A simplified reading of the original swimlane below, grouped by side and stage. Payment steps represent product logic, not a live banking integration.

Research artifact / End-to-end process

The diagram above is a redrawn reading of the team's original swimlane, which mapped every role, decision and handoff.

Original AdSphere multi-role campaign process swimlane with lanes for brand and influencer roles and an admin/system lane, across entering system, campaign development, content approval and payment
Original process-mapping artifact. Open the image in a new tab to inspect its details. View full diagram

Product decision / Balanced control

Neither side should control everything.

A central design principle was to distribute control across the relationship: brands decide whom to invite; influencers decide which opportunities to pursue; brands propose compensation; influencers can respond within defined limits.

01 / Discovery

Brand selects the pool.

Influencers can choose opportunities from the campaigns made available to them.

02 / Negotiation

One counteroffer.

A limited negotiation loop prevents open-ended back-and-forth.

03 / Content

Creator makes. Brand reviews.

Creative production and approval remain separate responsibilities.

Negotiation logic · a bounded loop

A business rule that matters

Fixed fee or commission.
Not both.

Each offer follows one compensation model: a fixed payment per deliverable or a sales-based commission. Making this choice explicit reduces ambiguity in the negotiation and downstream payment logic.

Product-level offers make compensation choices and agreement states visible. Sample data.

Decision → interface

Rules become visible states.

The interface exposes the negotiation outcome and offer model rather than leaving decisions in disconnected messages.

Approval & verification

Approval is a sequence, not a single button.

The workflow distinguishes the draft a brand approves from the content that is actually published. Tracking links and publication verification connect the creative process to performance measurement and payment eligibility.

  1. 01Draft uploadInfluencer submits content
  2. 02Brand reviewApproval or limited revision
  3. 03TrackingUTM-linked publication
  4. 04Post checkPublished link verified
  5. 05Payment logicEligible payout calculated

A draft being approved is not the same as a post being verified.

Two-sided product experience

One system. Different jobs to be done.

Brands coordinate campaigns and review offers, while influencers discover opportunities and track agreements. These early interface examples illustrate how the roles translated into different navigation and workflows.

Notifications, deal states and earnings support ongoing collaboration.

Discovery gives influencers a way to explore available campaign opportunities.

These are development-stage screens, not final production UI.

Measurement & limitations

We designed for attribution — and stayed clear about what was tested.

The product concept connects campaign links and codes to influencer-level performance and ROI reporting. The thesis explored UTM and GA4-based attribution, but the available validation relied partly on test data. Real banking integrations and long-running commercial campaigns were outside the implemented scope.

Designed

Campaign performance views, conversion attribution, payout logic and role-based workflows.

Partially validated

Attribution under test conditions and core product flows.

Not claimed

Live banking, production-scale adoption or measured real-world ROI improvement.

08 / The product thinking

Structure makes a complex relationship understandable.

  • Process research
  • Multi-role workflow
  • Explicit business rules
  • Approval & attribution logic

AdSphere taught me that defining who can act, when, and under which conditions is as much a product decision as designing the interface.

What I learned

A workflow becomes a product when its decisions are made explicit.

Mapping the real process revealed where flexibility mattered, where constraints protected users, and where verification was necessary.

Next case study · 03

HERA Helping turn paper-based university operations into a working desktop product — from requirements to rollout and feedback.