The context no design system can solve
In 2021, Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalized recreational cannabis. A real market began to emerge almost immediately: consumers with genuine needs, local sellers with products to offer, and no reliable way for either to find each other.
But the legal shift didn't erase decades of prohibition culture, it just made the stigma more complicated. Users approaching cannabis for the first time (many of them seeking relief from chronic pain or anxiety) weren't just looking for a product catalogue. They were navigating a purchase that still felt socially risky, legally ambiguous, and poorly served by any existing digital experience.
La Conecta set out to bridge that gap. My job was to design a platform that could do something harder than most e-commerce projects: make a stigmatized, fragmented, and legally evolving market feel safe enough to participate in.
The problem underneath the problem
Three compounding challenges made this genuinely difficult: not just visually, but structurally.
• Stigma and misinformation meant users approached the platform with anxiety and confusion in roughly equal measure. The design had to educate without condescending, and build trust without overpromising in an industry that has earned skepticism.
• A broken sales ecosystem meant suppliers, independent sellers, and delivery services operated in disconnected silos. Buyers had no reliable way to verify what they were getting or from whom. The platform had to impose structure on a market that didn't have any.
• An e-commerce experience that had to work harder than most by helping users navigate strain types, effects, formats, and regional availability, and complete a purchase with confidence, even on their first visit.
What I did
I led the UX end-to-end: user research, information architecture, wireframing, prototyping, and iterative refinement across devices.
• The research phase required getting past surface assumptions. Desk research confirmed the regulatory picture (decriminalization with still-evolving commercial rules) but user interviews surfaced what the legal context couldn't: the emotional dimension. Users wanted education and transparency as much as they wanted product discovery. They wanted to feel that the platform had thought about them, not just the transaction.
• I designed for two primary users: a first-time consumer navigating cannabis for medical relief who needed clear, credible information and a purchase flow that didn't feel sketchy; and an independent seller with a product and a customer base but no effective digital presence, who needed a platform that helped new buyers find and trust him.
• The design decisions that followed from that research: a strain education layer built into the browse experience, not bolted on as a separate section; a dispensary verification system that made trust visible rather than assumed; and a product discovery flow organized around effects and use cases rather than just product categories (because a first-time user doesn't know what strain they want, but they know what outcome they're looking for).
The unexpected obstacle
The hardest design problem wasn't the stigma or the fragmented market: it was the home screen.
The home screen had to simultaneously welcome a first-time user who needed orientation, serve a returning user who knew exactly what they wanted, and communicate platform legitimacy to someone who was still deciding whether to trust it at all. Three different mental models, one entry point.
Early testing showed that information density (even well-organized density) read as overwhelming to first-time users and as noise to experienced ones. The solution was progressive disclosure: a home screen that surfaced the most trust-building elements first (verified dispensaries, strain education, community reviews) and let users pull more complexity as they wanted it, rather than front-loading everything the platform could do.
Early explorations
Understanding the Existing Platform
Rapid Idea Generation
Establishing Core Structure
Developing Digital Blueprints
Refining the design
Logo and login flow. Rebranded to reflect the platform's tone, with accessibility standards and platform-specific UI guidelines applied to each social media integration point.
Signup confirmation. Visual hierarchy restructured so users understand exactly where they are and what comes next, without having to interpret the interface.
Home screen (the most iterated view). Progressive disclosure replaced front-loaded density after user feedback revealed that too much information at once undermined the trust the platform was trying to build.
Products. Reorganized around regional relevance and variety rather than inventory logic, so what users see first reflects where they are and what's actually available to them.
Strains. filtering mechanism added after research showed users couldn't navigate by product name alone. Search now works the way cannabis decisions actually get made: by effect, not by strain label.
Key Mockups
Outcome
✔ Early feedback validated the core hypothesis: that the right information, presented clearly, builds the trust that converts a curious browser into a confident buyer.
✔ One potential user said directly: "I love how the app manages a lot of information in a brief, concise way… Thank you for all the research and thoughtfulness you've put into this redesign."
✔ For a market where trust is the primary barrier to adoption, that's the outcome that matters most. The design didn't just make the platform usable: it made participation feel safe.
What I carried forward
This project taught me that designing for stigmatized or legally ambiguous markets requires a different kind of research question. It's not enough to ask 'what do users need to complete this task?' You have to ask 'what does this user need to believe before they'll even try?' Trust is a design problem, and it has to be solved before the first tap.
I've brought that question to every project involving a new user population, a sensitive domain, or a product asking users to do something they've never done before.
Tools: Figma.
Role: Lead UX Designer. End-to-end, user research, IA, wireframing (lo-fi and hi-fi), prototyping, iterative design, responsive across devices.
Designed in 2023 as a market-entry proposal for Mexico's emerging cannabis delivery space.
The project did not secure investor funding for launch and remains a concept prototype.
