DecorMatters

Context

DecorMatters is a home design app where users participate in weekly design challenges — decorating virtual rooms within a set of curated constraints. The experience users see is shaped entirely by what the Design Ops team configures behind the scenes.

What I Did

Each week I owned the setup of approximately 30 design challenges through the admin platform — from image selection to challenge configuration.

The Work

Image curation — selecting backdrop, template, and contest images against three criteria: visual style consistency, content authenticity, and creative appeal. Every image needed to feel real and inviting — not stock-photo generic.

Challenge configuration — defining furniture placement requirements, item categories, and constraints that shaped how users interacted with each space.

Visual standard development — with no formal style guide for challenge content, I developed and applied a consistent visual judgment across 30 weekly challenges. Maintaining that standard required active research: sourcing fresh references, studying trends in interior aesthetics, and iterating on content direction to keep challenges feeling relevant and engaging to users.

The core challenge — high volume and creative freshness rarely coexist. Producing 30 challenges a week without repeating visual patterns or losing quality required significant upfront research investment each cycle. Over time, this built a faster instinct for what works — and what users find compelling and engaging.

Impact

The quality of each challenge directly influences how deeply users engage with the app. Strong visual content keeps users coming back — and sustained engagement is what drives membership upgrades.

After passing a membership audit, users unlock premium features including AI-powered design suggestions and the ability to decorate rooms using their own photos. The challenges I configured were part of the engagement loop that moves users toward that milestone.