Launching a short-video app

A new social app had to compete for attention with established short-video platforms — with no content, no followers and no habits yet.

Solve the cold start: make discovery effortless for passive viewers on day one, while giving creators simple tools to publish, engage and grow.

UX research and mobile product design: analysed engagement patterns on established platforms, designed flows from onboarding to daily use, the swipe-based feed, a four-step creation flow, creator profiles with analytics, a reusable mobile component library, and prototypes for stakeholder demos and early user testing.

1. 01

   Decision

   Feed first.

   Why it mattered

   Swipe navigation with contextual actions puts content on screen in the first second — no setup before value.

2. 02

   Decision

   Creation in four steps.

   Why it mattered

   Capture, edit, add music or effects, publish with audience controls — each step reversible, nothing buried.

3. 03

   Decision

   Give creators a reason to stay.

   Why it mattered

   Profiles with reach, interactions and watch-time insights turn a posting tool into a growth tool.

• Passive viewing

  ⇄

  Creator tools

  Trade-off

  One feed for viewers, with creation one tap away rather than a separate mode.

• Familiar patterns

  ⇄

  Distinct identity

  Trade-off

  Platform-standard gestures, with a distinct visual language and component set.

1. Flows
2. Prototypes
3. Components

I prototyped and tested feed interaction patterns, used interactive prototypes in stakeholder demos and early user testing, and handed Engineering a reusable mobile component library.

Cold start is a design problem before it is a content problem: the first few seconds decide whether there is a second session.