→ social app where users share media in real-time, avoiding filtered content 🫂
→ ui/ux design, design systems, prototyping, branding 👨🏽💻
→ mar 2024 - jul 2024 🗓
→ figma file 🔗 ← please explore!
role
I was hired as the sole product designer to overhaul the daylyy iOS app. My task was to lead and complete all design for daylyy 2.0, a reimagined app with a new feature set. I also created and maintained daylyy’s new design system, including UI components and tone guidelines. I built working prototypes for all user flows in order to properly walkthrough the new app with shareholders and the development team.
pre-design process
Before any visuals were created, it was important to outline the current app and desired future for daylyy. I did so through these three initial documents.
- daylyy 1.0 feature set
- Screenshot documentation of the initial app
- daylyy 2.0 wants
- Meeting with stakeholders to uncover the ideal state of daylyy 2.0
- daylyy 2.0 app skeleton
- An in-depth outline and feature set of the desired daylyy 2.0 app
To complete the daylyy 2.0 wants document, I conducted user, marketing, and business interviews. A quick overview of what this outline looked like can be seen below.
User Wants
- Revert to early social media features
- Hide numbers: likes, followers, etc.
- See what friends are doing, unfiltered
- Upload fast and unplug from phone
- location-based interactions
- open to camera
Marketing Wants
- flexible brand identity that can be applied anywhere and everywhere
- draw new users from other social platforms
- one user’s session begins a session for 7 other users
- balance between too many and too few notifications
Business Wants
- have a narrow and obsessive initial target audience
- social sharing asset to send to friends, 7 downloads per install
- ideation/brainstorming process for new features/ad campaigns
- all team members post daily
After synthesizing these wants, I then outlined the ideal app that would satisfy all these needs. This included features for user onboarding, posting, newsfeed, profile, explore, settings, etc.
user onboarding
Once design began, one of the first challenges was achieving an average of 7 additional downloads per app install (as highlighted in the Business Wants section above). Reaching this goal required an abandonment of the stale invite friends text seen on many apps today.
A first thought was giving users a web to fill out with their friends, family, partners, and more, but through testing and surveying, it was found that users needed more direction.
I decided to categorize user’s possible invitees into fun, edgy categories to make the flow of sharing daylyy a conversation (and drama) starter. Some of these superlatives include:
Your standup comic friend
Your phone addicted friend
Your friend crush
Your world traveler friend
Your influencer friend
Your favorite groupchat
Your boring friend
Your long distance friend
Your friend that needs a haircut
Your bookworm friend
Your friend-zoned friend
Your exes bestfriend
Your short king friend
Your fringe friend
After giving extra direction for users when inviting friends, surveying showed an 83% growth in users inviting others to daylyy. Business needs were met and more eyes are now on the platform.
To go the extra step, in the explore section of the app I’ve included the number of users who have sent any given superlative to emphasize the casual nature of inviting users to daylyy.
low-stakes social
Other notable deviations from social media norm can be seen in the feed. Here, we eliminated the negativity seen in numbers. Number of likes and number of followers leads to a competitive environment, but daylyy is all about casual, low-stakes social.
This can first be seen on the newsfeed. The primary focus is the user’s streak and their interactions. No like counts, but instead a list of interactions. A collection of everyone who’s viewed, liked, commented, reposted, or shared. Emphasizing the user’s circle instead of quantifying their status.
When viewing a users profile, there is no follower/following list or count, but instead a collection of the user’s best friends. Quantifying interaction to highlight a users circle was more productive than giving a follower count that could be used to pit users against each other.
design handoff
To ensure a 1:1 development build of my designs, in my handoff I included the following:
App Screens w/ Developer notes
Prototypes (9)
UI Component Library
Tone, Color, and Animation Guidelines
Typography Library
Icon Library
App Store Assets
Branding Assets
conclusion
The daylyy 2.0 iOS app is currently being built by the talented development team while I rigorously QA each build. I am working alongside daylyy’s marketing team to ensure a strong launch in the fall of 2024. daylyy currently sees 50,000+ active users and this number is expected to only grow at 2.0 launch.
