Let's reimagine the social experience into one that is shared, collaborative, and FUN!
Challenge
One of my first major projects as an interface designer, and one of the most interesting to research and build. Inspired by TikTok, but built around its own philosophy and feature set — the design stage brought a number of distinct challenges, most of which are covered below.
My role
Throughout the MVP's development, I owned the concept for the new app design, building on existing research. That included additional competitive analysis, applying best practices from comparable products, making style decisions, mapping new user journeys, building prototypes, and working with the development team on implementation.
Design Process
Discovery
The client came well-prepared, sharing audience data, competitor analysis, and early sketches from a previous team. That earlier direction wasn't a fit, so — working closely with the project manager and the client — we rebuilt both the app's logic and its visual identity from the ground up.
App concept
We experimented with skipping wireframes entirely and testing key design decisions directly through concepts. In hindsight, that approach worked well for this specific project — though it's a fairly unusual choice, and most projects since have gone through proper mid-fidelity wireframing.
Features and flows
Onboarding
First impressions are critical for retention. For the first version, we focused onboarding on a quick overview of key features, helping users understand Flowk's purpose and get comfortable fast.
The Feed
The feed is where users spend most of their time, so it had to balance familiar interaction patterns with a fresh way of presenting and engaging with content. Finding that balance was my main task here.
Discovery (search & browse)
Users should be free to explore content their own way. In the Discovery section, we built a horizontally scrolling feed of recommended videos (per the client's request), plus a search bar that filters by Videos, Flows, Users, and Hashtags.
User profile
Profiles — whether the user's own or someone else's — surface both a creator's videos and their Flowks (reactions left on other creators' videos). At the client's request, we also added a Find Friends feature, letting users search the platform or import from their contacts (with permission).
Shoot and edit
The current post-processing toolkit is intentionally lightweight, with room to expand later. Today, users can trim video length, choose a cover image, apply a small set of filter presets, and add simple text overlays.
Publish
Before publishing, users can attach a description, hashtags, tagged users, and location. A profanity filter helps keep the platform's tone positive — flagged content prompts a revision before it can go live.
Conclusions
This ongoing project was a chance to dig into social media design, understand how users interact with this content format, and build out a first functional version. The current release is a foundation the team plans to keep expanding.
