DriveLine AI was a Central Florida ad tech company building a geolocation platform for automotive dealerships and marketing agencies. The platform used real-time MAID data and geo-fencing to deliver targeted ad campaigns and foot traffic reporting.
I was brought in to replace offshore design work that wasn't cutting it — what I'd call Dribbble slop before AI slop was a thing. Over two years I worked across three distinct phases, each telling a very different story about what happens when product discipline holds, and when it breaks down.
DriveLine eventually became a LiveRamp partner, integrating into their data collaboration ecosystem before the company dissolved in 2024.
DriveLine needed a working MVP to validate the product and pitch investors. I worked directly with the CTO in a fully async collaboration — no meetings, no standups. Just a Slack design stream and daily momentum.
The scope covered user flows, information architecture, geo-fencing map UI, report builder, and a reusable component library built for developer handoff in Zeplin.
The MVP shipped on schedule. DriveLine used the designs to secure $1M+ in venture funding and onboard their first customers including Cold Stone, Pinkberry, Baja Fresh, and Universal Studios. Customer base grew 1,100% following launch.
Following the MVP success, DriveLine shifted focus toward power users and advanced data visualization. The brief became ambiguous — the team was exploring solutions without a clear problem to anchor them.
Concepts included a heat mapping component and advanced audience segmentation tools, none of which reached production. The team expanded, adding developers including a frontend engineer based in Ukraine during a period of significant instability.
The frontend/backend skill mismatch created daily dev callbacks and required multiple design walkthrough workshops. Meetings increased. Design output did not.
A new Product Manager joined the team and took ownership of product direction. Weekly 1:1s were introduced alongside structured Figma review cycles. Each major feature generated 40–50 Figma comments requiring full resolution before any forward movement.
Comment resolution became its own iteration cycle. Features that should have taken one week took two. The feedback loop was unstructured and sign-off criteria were never clearly defined.
Design velocity slowed significantly — and the bottleneck was misattributed to design output rather than the feedback process itself. Engineering eventually moved forward independently. None of the V1 designs shipped.
DriveLine dissolved in 2024. The MVP we built together remains one of the cleanest engagements of my career — async, fast, zero rework. The phases that followed are an honest record of what happens when product discipline breaks down as a team scales.
That distinction is what the metrics are for. Not to showcase wins, but to show that output quality is always a systems problem — not a talent problem.