A challenger that reshaped the Italian mobile market.
Iliad entered the Italian market in 2018 with a transparent, no-hidden-fees approach that reshaped industry standards. Part of the Iliad Group, which also owns Free Mobile, one of France's major telco provider, it quickly gained millions of users with simple mobile plans. After a few years of growth, I was brought in to design its native app, meant to reach a broader audience and offer a smoother experience than the existing website. I led the process from wireframes to a high-fidelity prototype, shaping the user experience and building the Figma UI Kit.
Key Challenges
Designing for an already established, highly diverse user base with complex usage needs required a constant balance between simplicity and functional completeness.
Guiding users through several required steps, from login to personalization and preferences, without making the experience feel long or overwhelming.
Designing an experience that felt clear and effortless for users from 18 to 60, with very different levels of digital confidence.
Helping users manage multiple SIMs on the same account, often shared within a household, without confusion over which line they were viewing.
Making data usage and limits abroad clear and reassuring, in a context that typically causes uncertainty and stress for travellers.
The decisions that did most of the work.
Give every SIM a face and a name.
During onboarding we introduced profile customization for the first time: users choose an illustration and assign a nickname to each SIM, a capability that did not exist before and that immediately improves recognition across multiple lines. Nickname and illustration remain editable at any time from the Profile section.
Make switching lines feel instant, without rebuilding authentication.
The new My SIMs screen lets users switch profiles directly from the Profile section, seeing illustration, nickname, and phone number of the active SIM. Switching triggers a system-level logout, but the app securely stores credentials to enable seamless re-access.
Let users tell the app where they are.
A dedicated country selection feature lets users choose the country they are travelling to or currently in, showing plan-based roaming data specific to that location: what is included and what remains, even with limited connectivity.
One gauge, one truth.
A unified consumption gauge combines plan data and any active foreign packages. When a roaming package is active it is consumed first, and the interface clearly shows which allowance is being drawn from, reducing anxiety and supporting better planning.
Turn Discover into the app's third tab.
We added a Discover section so users could keep up with iliad news, new plans, and ongoing initiatives, giving them a reason to open the app beyond checking their bill. As engagement grew, Discover evolved into a full Shop, now one of the app's three main tabs, where users browse and activate offers directly.
User on Google Play Store
What this project taught me.
A few principles kept surfacing throughout the project: about how we built, what we chose not to add, and why the results followed.
Building the Figma UI Kit with variants and variables before development made handoff consistent at scale. Investing in structure early reduces design debt later.
The main challenges — Multi SIM and data abroad — were problems of perceived complexity, not missing features. Simplifying the existing experience had more impact than adding new ones.
In a commoditised sector like telco, #1 in the app store and a 4.5/5 rating prove that user experience can be a real competitive advantage, not just a requirement.
The goal was to improve on the existing web platform, not replicate it. Thinking native-first from wireframe stage prevented dragging wrong patterns into the final product.
The numbers that followed.
The app ranked #1 among free apps in Italy on both the App Store and Play Store in February 2025, establishing itself as the most downloaded and widely trusted solution by users.