I designed and developed Braid, a social platform, taking it from 0.5 to 1.
Braid is a social platform to share authentic stories and knowledge through narrative storytelling.
UX Designer
Jan 2024 – Present
UX Designer (Me)
Product Strategist
Software Engineers
Braid aims to make a place where people can talk and get better at their careers and life without pressure of perfection or excessive self-promotion.
Share personal experiences
Uncover hidden knowledge
Grow in careers and lives
Let's breakdown the story creation process:
Insights:
1: Users find the landing page lacking in comprehensive information regarding usage and features, leading to uncertainty about its trustworthiness.
2: Users want a safe space where they can be vulnerable, and they anticipate enhanced privacy on Braid.
When developers built the MVP, they prioritized the desktop view. However, as the user base grew, the broken mobile screens deterred users, leading to loss of engagement and potential users.
Insights:
1: A story thread can become lengthy, making it difficult to navigate and read.
2. Stories discussing similar topics may be scattered, it's hard to collect them and make it organized.
In the earlier Braid version, users could only share their stories with the Braid community, and there were no other choices. So, I added various sharing options to make it easier for users to share their personal journeys in a way that they feel comfortable.
⚠️ Before
💡 After
I included a clear message explaining Braid as a product and incorporated UI screenshots to give users a preview before they decide to get involved
In the earlier Braid version, users could only share their stories with the Braid community, and there were no other choices. So, I added various sharing options to make it easier for users to share their personal journeys in a way that they feel comfortable.
⚠️ Before
💡 After
During my research on other text-based platforms with discussion threads, I noticed a significant number of complaints regarding reading, navigating, and exporting posts.
Edit: Users can reorganize a thread bookmarked stories to different chapters.
1. Rearrange the order of stories in a thread based on topic, particularly useful for long threads with divergent conversations, departing from the original chronological order.
2. Group posts of interest on the same topic together, ensuring a more organized and focused reading experience.
Read
Because it's a completely new feature, I designed an onboarding process to help users understand. However, users were impatient about it.
During usability testing, I found the challenge doesn't stem from users' unfamiliarity with the operational aspects of the feature (such as the function of each button) but rather in their lack of understanding about what the feature is designed to accomplish.
All three participants initially attempted to skip the seemingly lengthy tutorial (without knowing how many steps it included) and conveyed they want to try it by themselves instead of reading instruction, but after modification, both of the two new participants went through the tutorial without skipping.
⚠️ Before: Operation Guidance
❌ Tried to skip
❌ Not knowing how many steps
❌ Wanted to try instead of reading instructions
💡 After: Feature Purpose
✅ Not tried to skip
✅ Fine with 3 steps
✅ Can use the feature without step-by-step tooltips
Initially, I conceived book mode as a viewing option to offer an alternative way to read and rearrange a thread. To begin, I set the starting touchpoint at a story page, allowing users to switch views. However, participants did not grasp the concept; they wondered why stories were already present in a book if they hadn't imported any content.
Their perception leaned towards considering a book as a collection of saved stories. Therefore, I've modified the flow and introduced greater flexibility regarding book content material, removing the limitation to a single thread.
⚠️ Before: Start from the Story Page
❌ Didn't understand where were the content from
❌ Didn't understand the default chapter structure
💡 After: Start from the Book Page
✅ Understood where were the content from
✅ Started from scratch but provide sorting feature
User base grew by 73.2%, expanding from 71 to 125 users.
Content increased by 76.8%, rising from 307 to 543 stories.
Successfully secured grants from New America and the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan.
Learned to collaborate with developers, finding the balance between ideal design and implementation feasibility
Within a startup, I wore different hats, broadening my skill set beyond research and design to delve further into development.
Within a UX team of one, I learned to juggle multiple tasks efficiently and work at a fast pace.
Other tasks I tackled includes but not limited to the following
- Homepage redesign
- Figma UI library set up and update
- Sign in process design
- Onboarding process design and development
- URL redirection page design
- Explore page design and development
- Notification system design
- Post editor redesign
- Team page development
Worldiff
App Design
#UX Design #Mobile App #Online forum
Prototype a social-media-like app for new foreign residents to share their cultural-related experiences as posts, aiming to help foreigners to understand the local culture.
NSF I-Corps Hub: Great Lakes Region
Need Assessment & Usability Testing
#UX Research #Client-based #Website
Evaluated and synthesized users’ needs by conducting interviews, survey, heuristic evaluations, and usability tests.Offered recommendations to improve the usability.
