DLIA Mobile App
DLIA is a resale marketplace that helps users recover value from unused, transferable bookings by connecting buyers and sellers through a simple, secure, and intuitive mobile experience.
Duration
3 weeks
Industry
Mobile App UI
Client
DLIA
Category
App Development
Turning unused bookings into something valuable again
DLIA is a resale marketplace built around a simple problem: people often end up with bookings they can no longer use, but many of those bookings cannot simply be refunded. Instead of letting that value disappear, DLIA gives users a way to resell transferable flights, hotels, event tickets, car rentals, and other bookings.
The challenge
The resale experience is fundamentally different from a conventional marketplace. A buyer isn't simply purchasing an object they can inspect. They are purchasing a booking with conditions, transfer requirements, dates, restrictions, and a level of uncertainty around whether the transfer will actually go through.
That created several UX problems to solve:
How do we make users comfortable buying something they cannot physically inspect?
How do we allow buyers and sellers to communicate without pushing the transaction outside the platform?
How do we make negotiation feel natural while still keeping the transaction structured?
How do we connect conversation, payment, and transfer without creating a confusing journey?
My approach was to treat the product as more than a marketplace. The experience needed to act as a transaction layer between two people, giving both sides the information, communication, and actions they needed to complete a deal confidently.
When chat becomes part of the transaction
One of the biggest design decisions was rethinking what chat meant inside the product.
In a typical marketplace, chat is usually just a place to send messages. For DLIA, that approach created unnecessary friction. A buyer might ask about a booking, negotiate a price, agree to purchase, and then have to leave the conversation to find the relevant payment or transaction controls.
I designed the chat experience to become a transactional workspace rather than simply a messaging feature.
From conversation to action
The conversation became the natural place for the deal to progress.
A buyer could ask questions about the booking, discuss transfer requirements, negotiate with the seller, and then move toward payment without losing the context of the conversation.
Instead of separating:
Chat → Agreement → Payment → Transfer
the experience connected them into one continuous journey:
Discover → Discuss → Agree → Pay → Transfer → Confirm
Making payment feel contextual
Payment was designed around the conversation rather than treated as an isolated checkout experience.
Once both sides reached an agreement, the relevant transaction action could be surfaced within the chat. This meant users didn't have to remember what they had agreed to, search through another section of the app, or restart the purchasing process.
The conversation effectively became the control centre for the transaction.
Solving the trust problem
Because DLIA deals with transferable bookings, trust was another major consideration. Listings require supporting evidence, while buyers need visibility into booking details, transferability, and transaction progress.
I used the interface to make these details visible at the moments they mattered rather than overwhelming users with information upfront.
The result was a cleaner relationship between:
Listing information
Conversation
Payment
Transfer status
Transaction history
Designing for what happens after payment
The experience didn't end at checkout.
A successful purchase still depends on the seller completing the transfer and the buyer confirming that it has been completed. DLIA's product therefore needed to make the post-payment state just as clear as the purchase itself.
I designed the flow around clear transaction states so users could understand what had happened, what was currently happening, and what they needed to do next.
The result
Rather than designing another resale marketplace with a chat feature attached to it, I designed DLIA around the idea that the conversation itself could move the transaction forward.
This reduced unnecessary navigation, kept important context together, and created a more natural path from asking a simple question to completing a purchase.
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