LicitaLAB
YEAR
2021 – 2024
ROLE
Founding Product Designer
PRODUCT
B2B SaaS
Public procurement
ENGINEERING
Samantha Moreno
Matías Valenzuela
Iván Henríquez
Francisco Martínez
YEAR
2021 – 2024
ROLE
Founding Product Designer
PRODUCT
B2B SaaS
Public procurement
ENGINEERING
Samantha Moreno
Matías Valenzuela
Iván Henríquez
Francisco Martínez
LicitaLAB is a SaaS platform designed to help companies find and manage business opportunities on Mercado Público. In a context where reviewing tenders manually is often slow, exhausting, and hard to scale, the product aimed to simplify this process through advanced search, customizable settings, tracking, and automation.
I joined the team at a very early stage, when the product already had a functional foundation but still lacked structure. My role was to build on that base and evolve it into a clearer, more coherent experience that could scale over time.
My role
I was the only one designer on the team, working closely with engineering and actively contributing to decisions that spanned product, content, and implementation. Rather than just designing screens, I took ownership of the end-to-end experience and helped shape the product as it continued to grow.
One of the biggest challenges was the constant overlap of work layers. As the product evolved, I had to continuously move between strategic and tactical work: defining structure, designing new features, fixing friction points, and responding to ongoing business needs.
On top of that, we were working within an inherently complex domain. Mercado Público is not an easy system to navigate, so a key part of my role was making LicitaLAB feel clearer, lighter, and easier to use than the system it was built around.
The core of the product
A key part of LicitaLAB’s value was helping users discover opportunities they might otherwise miss. This meant designing an experience capable of handling a large amount of content without becoming overwhelming.
Much of my work focused on the core of the product: the flows that allowed users to discover opportunities, understand them, track them, and take action. My contribution wasn’t just about adding features, but about shaping the central experience of the SaaS.
But discovering an opportunity was only the beginning. Once identified, the product needed to support users in understanding it, following its progress, and acting on it. A significant part of my work involved connecting search with the rest of the experience: detail views, tracking, ownership, statuses, and application-related flows.
My focus was on making those transitions feel seamless — ensuring users didn’t have to “reset” their mental model in each view, but could move forward with continuity.
During my time at LicitaLAB, the product grew in scope, complexity, and maturity. Multiple new features were launched, the experience became more consistent, and the product scaled to over 300 clients.
But more importantly, something else happened: in a space that often feels technical, heavy, or difficult to navigate, LicitaLAB began to stand out for its ease of use. That clarity didn’t happen by accident, it was the result of many small decisions, constant iteration, and a strong focus on how the product should feel in use.
More than designing an interface, I helped shape a product that needed to grow without losing clarity.
Learnings
LicitaLAB was the project where I learned to design with real responsibility — making decisions without having everything fully figured out upfront, thinking in systems rather than just screens, and defending my perspective across different stakeholders. It also meant maintaining a coherent experience while the product itself was constantly evolving.
It was a highly demanding experience, but also one of the most formative in my career. It taught me that my value goes beyond designing well: it lies in helping a product find its shape, coherence, and direction as it grows.
