Mara Hollis

Available from Nov

Work

Services

About

Contact

Let’s talk

Mara Hollis

Available from Nov

Work

Services

About

Contact

Let’s talk

Mara Hollis

Available from Nov

Let’s talk

Mara Hollis

Available from Nov

All work

(Case study)

Product

2026

Tessel: a calmer way to run

freelance finances.

Tessel helps freelancers invoice, get paid and set money aside for tax in one place. I led the redesign of their iOS app and built the design system the team still ships with.

Client

Tessel Finance

Role

Lead product designer

Timeline

14 weeks, 2026

Services

iOS app, Design system

Visit live site

(01)

Overview

Freelancers don’t want a finance app. They want to stop worrying about money on a Tuesday afternoon.

Tessel had grown fast on word of mouth, but the app had grown with it: five tabs, three ways to create an invoice and a tax screen that most people never found. Support tickets were climbing and new users churned in their first week.

We set one goal for the redesign. A new member should send their first invoice in under three minutes and understand what they owe in tax without opening a spreadsheet.

fewer support tickets in the first month after launch

2:40

median time to send a first invoice, down from eleven minutes

2:40

median time to send a first invoice, down from eleven minutes

4.8

App Store rating across 3,100 reviews, up from 3.9

4.8

App Store rating across 3,100 reviews, up from 3.9

Paper first. Forty flows sketched in the first week.

Testing the new invoice flow with members in Porto.

(02)

Approach

Three decisions that shaped it.

One button, one invoice

We merged three creation paths into a single flow that starts from the client, not the document. Line items remember what you billed last time, so most invoices are two taps and a total.

Tax as a pot, not a report

Instead of a tax dashboard, every payment that lands moves a share into a visible pot. Members see one number, what is safe to spend, and the rest is out of sight until it is due.

A system the team could own

We rebuilt the UI on 60 components and a small token set shared between Figma and SwiftUI. Two engineers and one designer now ship features without waiting on me, which was the point.

The component inventory, before it became 60 components.

(03)

Outcome

“Mara made a complicated product feel obvious. Support tickets fell by half in the first month.”

Jonas Reyes, co-founder of Tessel

The new app launched in March 2026. Six months on, Tessel’s team has shipped two major features on the same system, and the tax pot is the most used screen in the app.

Design

Mara Hollis

Engineering

Tessel iOS team

Research

Inês Duarte

Copy

Sam Whitaker

(Next)

Web

2025

Norvane Labs

Read the case study

(05)

Contact

Have a project in mind?

Tell me what you are building and where it hurts. I reply to every email within two working days.

hello@marahollis.studio

Booking from November 2026. Two project slots left this quarter.

(05)

Contact

Have a project in mind?

Tell me what you are building and where it hurts. I reply to every email within two working days.

hello@marahollis.studio

Booking from November 2026. Two project slots left this quarter.

(05)

Contact

Have a project in mind?

Tell me what you are building and where it hurts. I reply to every email within two working days.

hello@marahollis.studio

Booking from November 2026. Two project slots left this quarter.