Year
2025
Client
Skie Labs
Category
MICRO Saas Tool
Product Duration
3 - 4 Weeks
The Spark
This project started with a late-night call from a PM friend. They were trying to get 6 GB of logs from a customer; fast, securely, and without spinning up a new IAM user. There wasn’t a simple way. That moment sparked BeamUp: a no-nonsense tool to move files directly into your own cloud storage.
The problem
Teams often need to collect big files (logs, videos, builds) from customers. But existing solutions like email, WeTransfer, or custom dashboards either:
Don't scale well
Involve insecure handoffs
Or require complex cloud configurations
We wanted to remove the friction, especially for product and engineering teams.
Our Users
User Interviews (n=12): We spoke with PMs and Engineers at startups and mid-sized companies who regularly exchanged large media and data files with clients. Every interviewee cited “email attachment size limits,” “manual S3 bucket setup,” and “lack of visibility into upload status” as top pain points.
Competitive Analysis: Tools like WeTransfer and Dropbox are easy but “black-box” (no direct cloud integration, branding limitations, link expirations), while bespoke S3 solutions require engineering overhead. No existing product combined branded, server-less uploads with enterprise security and user simplicity.
Key Insights:
Seamless Setup Matters: Non-technical stakeholders dread bucket policies and IAM complexity.
Brand Trust Is Critical: Clients want uploads to feel like an official part of the product experience, not a third-party add-on.
Real-Time Feedback: Upload progress bars and confirmation notifications greatly reduce support tickets.
User Flow
User Flows & Wireframes: User clicks “Connect Your Storage” and follows a guided flow to assume a cross-account IAM role; no secret keys to rotate.
Create Beam: Once storage is connected, the user lands on “Create Beam,” where they choose that storage and define a portal (Beam) name.
Share & Upload: After creating a Beam, the user gets a shareable link which is shared with their client. The client sees a drag and drop upload with a clear border, iconography, and label
Visual Language
Tone: Clean, professional, approachable, think Linear meets AWS Console.
Palette: Neutral grays with a vibrant teal-blue accent to highlight CTAs and progress bars.
Typography: Roboto for clarity across devices.
Key Challenges
Explaining security simply: Had to explain cross-account IAM roles and temp credentials without intimidating the user.
No backend storage: All designs had to assume nothing was stored; including upload status, user sessions, etc.
One-page simplicity: How do you explain the product, its benefits, and get people to sign up; all in one scroll?
WHAT i SHIPPED
Full landing page design
Signup/login UI with magic link auth
Upload portal dashboard UI
Brand identity (logo, color palette, tone)
3-step onboarding flow
Email templates (signup, verification, upload complete)
Next steps
Add S3 credential validation
Expand to GCS and Azure
A drop-in widget that SaaS tools can embed
Working on BeamUp as my very first personal project; collaborating hand-in-hand with a developer friend, taught me invaluable lessons that I carry into every design endeavor:
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Crafting clear, concise design specs and maintaining an open feedback loop with engineering helped me appreciate the push-and-pull between ideal UI patterns and real-world implementation constraints.
MVP & Rapid Iteration Mindset: Embracing a concierge-style MVP reinforced the power of focusing on core user value (secure, five-minute file sharing) over feature bloat, validating assumptions quickly with real users, and iterating based on concrete feedback.
Technical Empathy: Diving into IAM role setups and serverless upload flows deepened my understanding of back-end security patterns, enabling me to design user flows that respect engineering realities without sacrificing simplicity.
User-Centered Testing: Early prototype tests highlighted subtle usability issues, error messaging clarity, drag-drop affordances which underscored the importance of real-user validation before any line of code is written.
End-to-End Ownership: Leading everything from initial concept sketches through wireframes, high-fidelity prototyping, and developer handoff gave me confidence in driving a product vision across the full UI/UX lifecycle.
BeamUp wasn’t just a tool to solve a late-night crisis, it was a crash course in teamwork, lean product development, and designing with both user needs and technical constraints in mind. This experience has laid a solid foundation for all my future UI/UX projects. Shoutout to Noel Mathew , the full stack developer friend who brought this to life!
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