Kardder

Overview: design refinement and development of a new user base over the course of 18 weeks

Role: UX Research, UI/UX Design, Product Marketing

Toolkit: Figma, FigJam, Adobe

Timeline: 2022 — 2023

Background

Kardder is a social media application created to help connect users with other people nearby regardless of whether they are looking for a casual relationship, friendship, or something more long-term.

The app focuses on building new social circles by connecting users to others nearby with similar interests, hobbies, or activities thus allowing users to find new friends, travel buddies, and workout partners. As of now the app boasts over 315 ratings with an average of 4.9 stars.

Goals

Kardder had already launched its minimum viable product (MVP) a few months prior to me joining the team. However, the design system in place had inconsistent task flow and lacked cohesive brand identity which was greatly impacting the platforms usability. Our high—level goal was to refine and introduce an easily recognizable brand identity, introduce visual consistency between elements, and smooth out the user flow.

Challenges

As Kardder was an early stage startup, the budget and timelines did not allow for real user testing between stages — quantitative data from user metrics and qualitative data from the team’s personal connections were used to guide design decisions. After first launch, we also lacked a user base large enough to populate the map and feed to encourage users to interact. We addressed this in our second iteration by altering designs to encourage long-time users in combination with in-person product marketing across school campuses.

Redesigned Profile Tab

My Impact

I worked alongside a close team of designers and the development team to reimagine how Kardder could fit into prospective users lives. The original model only featured live posts viewable for 24 hours on the map. However, since our goal with Kardder was to facilitate in-person interactions, I introduced location cards to view local ‘hot spots’ that the user may have interest in.

Process

Identifying Current Issues

Before joining the team, Kardder had already launched their minimum viable product (MVP). The overarching goal presented to me was to refresh Kardder’s design. After a look at the product in its current state, I identified the contributors of a few major pain points.

  • Lack of personalized brand identity to differentiate from other social media platforms

  • Disorganized navigation and confusing user flow

  • Current design emphasized the app’s secondary feature more than its main ‘map’ feature

Redesign and Research

As our budget was small with a tight timeline, we decided to adjust the traditional design process. After outlining our background goals, I concurrently conducted foundational research while creating design iterations that I presented week-by-week to the rest of the team and company CFO.

I approached the redesign in a relatively traditional manner, trying to streamline user flows to be simple and adjusting the visual design as needed while still staying true to the current branding. During this process, I kept the design principles below in mind which allowed me to keep approach the overhaul of the app with the user at the center.

Competitive Analysis

From the competitive analysis we were able to see that Kardder had its own unique features that made it stand out: live proximity-based content and nearby user discovery.

While other features could still be refined, we decided to lean into Kardder’s unique features for our redesign, emphasizing user connection and local community.

Preliminary Research

Due to tight budget constraints, I leaned into my university and personal network to conduct a few user interviews identifying frustrations in the current app flow. Here are some of my findings.

  • users felt pressured to fill out optional pages since they were unable to skip them in the onboarding process

  • the Nearby feature was too crowded and confused many users which prompted them to not know how to search for new friends to follow

  • profile photos were too large causing users to not realize they could view profile details with a scroll

  • since the app allowed users to list over 30+ interests, it was too broad and discouraged users from interacting with each other due to overwhelming user-choices

Through my research I found that the mobile application was difficult to navigate design-wise which discouraged and overwhelmed users. Therefore in our redesign, I focused on streamlining the experience of the app by removing unnecessary features and making visuals clearer to reduce cognitive load.

Initial Redesign

Nearby Browse

Experimentation with staggered profile, less visual clutter, and more defined cards to reduce cognitive load.

New Navigation Bar

Replaced Nearby tab icon with a larger center button to add visual weight encourage users to use the feature to find more connections.

Why This Version Was Rejected

  • Although the full-screen profile view remained disliked, the development team did not have the time and resources to implement a full switch as they would have to restructure the back-end.

  • Staggered posts were difficult as all profile photos were currently the same size. We additionally created an iteration with horizontal scrolling. However, this was deemed impractical as it may cause certain gestures to be confused as vertical scrolling was also implemented on the page.

    Final Conclusion

    This version encouraged visual changes to offset cognitive load. However, it failed to emphasize Kardder’s stand-out features and was not feasible for the development team to implement.

Profiles

Revised whole screen Profile image into a smaller overview of the entire profile to allow users to quickly glance and gain insight into other user’s interests from a quick visual glance through their highlights. The goal of this design was to make profile info more scannable so users could quickly browse through profiles.

Back to the Drawing Board

During this time, we began marketing the app on campus to the student body. Taking advantage of our wider reach, I prepared an interview script and recruited students to participate with energy drinks as compensation. Here are some of the results:

  • participants found the tab where posts are on the map to be one of the most important features

  • most users used the app to find local hot spots near campus

  • participants had little interest in viewing number of common interests between users

  • found the Browse VS. Nearby Tabs to be confusing

  • most users never touched the icebreaker function when starting chats with other users

New Color Rebrand

Selecting a color to emphasize our brand identity and make it more easily recognizable through color association

Places Near You

  • added functionality to see how many friends have visited places

  • ability to scroll through locations on the bottom to find “hot spots” that the user may be interested in

My Proposed Changes

Conclusion

Overall this was one of the more intense yet rewarding projects I worked on. I was able to work collaboratively with my cohort of interns, bounce off of each other’s design styles and create new iterations. I learned how to conduct research even with short timelines and limited reach. Its difficult to find an environment where there is constant feedback and I was able to quickly grow as a user experience designer and researcher.

Next Steps

In the future, as the platform continues to grow it may be beneficial to pursue these possible avenues:

  • UX writing to ensure that the app language remains in line with our design language

  • Accessibility testing to ensure the platform can cater to users of different backgrounds and enhance platform inclusivity

  • Geographical expansion of the app to the broader LA community or other school campuses. During my time on the team, we ran into several issues caused by our lack of a user base. Sometimes the content was not diverse or populated enough to garner interest. Expanding geographical reach enhances the overall network of the app and can bring new niches that users may be interested in onto the platform.