Redesigning the community space
Redesign of a key feature from the MVP, focused on improving how users interact, explore content, and engage with the community.
Role
Product Designer (full product design process)
Scope
MVP → feature redesign
Focus
Interaction, content, engagement
Context
MVP · Budget constraints · Product evolution
Context
The app is a social platform built around books, where users can connect, share content, and interact based on shared interests.
Societies was a core feature of the app, designed as a space where users could share content and interact around common interests.
In the MVP, it provided basic functionality, but the experience was limited and didn’t encourage users to keep engaging.
Explore the full project
This case study covers the product journey from MVP to previous improvements
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Research & exploration
Exploring patterns and defining the approach
Exploration & feature analysis
To understand how community features work, I analyzed platforms like Reddit, Threads, and TikTok, focusing on interaction, content formats, and engagement.
This helped identify what works, what doesn’t, and which ideas could be relevant for this product.
From this analysis, several patterns became clear:
- Content and interaction are combined in a single feed, reducing navigation
- Making actions visible and easy to access increases participation
- Visual content (images, GIFs) plays a key role in engagement
- Highlighted content and top contributors help increase visibility and activity
Feature selection & constrains
Features were classfied based on impact, complexity, and relevance for an early-stage product.
The proposed features were then reviewed with the product manager and developers to ensure they were feasible within time and budget.
Selected
highlights, top members, images and GIFs, improving engagement with low complexity
Considered
filters, useful for content discovery but not introduced at this stage, as they require a higher volume of content to be effective
Discarded
external links, video content, or complex thread navigation, due to high complexity or low relevance for this product
Final design
Applying key decisions to create a clearer and more engaging experience
Unified feed
Accessing societies required multiple steps, making it harder to follow conversations.
Societies were merged into a single feed with filters, highlights were added, and the visual design was simplified to improve readability.
This makes content easier to access and helps users stay engaged.
Content & interaction
Ways to interact were limited and not clearly visible, reducing participation.
Actions were moved within thumb reach, and support for images, GIFs, and top members was introduced.
This makes interaction faster and encourages users to engage more.
Navigation & filtering
Moving between societies was not intuitive.
A top navigation and side menu were introduced to switch and filter content.
This creates a more flexible and scalable structure.
Threads & comments
Conversations became hard to follow with many replies.
Collapsible comments and a pinned thread header were introduced to reduce visual noise and keep context while scrolling.
This makes discussions easier to read and navigate.
Validation
To validate the proposed solution before development, quick usability testing and a heuristic evaluation were conducted.
Usability testing (Maze)
To validate the solution before development, usability testing was conducted using a Figma prototype.
Four key tasks were tested, covering navigation, interaction, and content engagement. All users completed the tasks without drop-offs. Minor misclicks appeared in some cases, especially when switching between societies, but did not affect completion.
Heatmaps show that users interacted with the expected areas, confirming that navigation and actions were easy to understand.
Key learnings
Not every feature should be introduced early, even if it’s easy to build. Features like filtering need enough content to work properly and can hurt the experience if added too soon.
Focusing on a single feature showed that improving structure and interaction has more impact than adding several new features.
Validation doesn’t need to be complex. Quick testing with simple prototypes can provide valuable insights and help avoid unnecessary iterations.