When I joined Niche, it was an early-stage community app that functioned more like Instagram—users could make posts, but engagement was low and conversations rarely took off. Through user feedback, it became clear that people weren’t looking for a feed—they were looking for connection. I partnered closely with our PM, engineers, and our CEO (a designer himself) to reimagine the product around interest-based group messaging. The result was a complete redesign centered on Clubs and chat and it was incredibly rewarding to see users finally interacting in meaningful, ongoing conversations.
As the product designer on the team I led user research from planning to conclusions, turning insights into clear product direction. I owned the branding refresh which evolved the visual identity to support the product’s shift toward community and connection. Working closely with the CEO (also a designer) and the engineering team, I collaborated on restructuring the app’s IA and interaction design—creating wireframes, flows, and final UI.
My focus was balancing user needs, clarity, and usability across the full design process.
Engagement in Clubs was low. While users could technically post and explore, most weren’t participating in conversations—and many didn’t return after signing up. In our in-app feedback club users told us they weren’t seeing clubs that felt relevant to them, didn’t feel motivated to start their own, and were often onboarded into topics they weren’t interested in. More than once, we heard some version of:
The path to finding and joining the right communities felt fragmented. Users didn’t feel inspired to participate — and the few who tried often struggled to find conversations worth joining.
How might we make it easier for users to discover and participate in interest-based communities?
To better understand user behavior, I gathered insights from two key sources:
I spoke with five users representing a mix of active, new, and lapsed members. These interviews helped surface key motivations and pain points around using the app.
I reviewed real-time feedback posted by users directly inside a built-in “Feedback Club,” where they regularly shared confusion, frustrations, and suggestions. This gave me access to a larger pool of unprompted insights from users interacting with the live product.
To synthesize both sets of findings, I affinity mapped the feedback into themes, surfacing recurring issues around discoverability, participation, navigation, and brand perception.
Discoverability:
Users had trouble finding relevant clubs and felt the app didn’t effectively surface communities aligned with their interests.
Participation Hesitancy:
Many users didn’t feel confident starting a new club and weren’t sure how active existing ones were — leading to hesitation and low engagement.
App Perception:
Several users described Niche as “just another social app,” comparing it to Instagram — highlighting a need for stronger differentiation through branding and UX.
We needed to reimagine Niche’s experience from the ground up, making connection the core of the product rather than an afterthought.
Our early approach was to put club chats into the existing app, hoping that adding conversation features would spark engagement without overhauling the core structure. While this quick iteration gave us insight into how users interacted with clubs, it became clear that it wasn’t enough — navigation was still clunky, and users struggled to find and join the right communities. Instead of forcing new features into a framework that wasn’t working, we took a step back.
The CEO and I worked together to map out the end-to-end experience, identified points of friction, and worked with engineering to prototype a more direct, messaging-first flow. This pivot simplified the journey from opening the app to engaging in a conversation, reducing unnecessary steps and creating clearer entry points into clubs.
By testing early and often, we were able to refine the design in real time. Small adjustments — like renaming “Home” to “My Clubs” or surfacing conversation threads sooner — had a big impact on clarity and engagement. This iterative process not only shaped a better product, but also built alignment across the team as we saw users respond positively to each improvement. The result of these iterations is captured in the comparison below, showing how the redesigned task flow reduced friction and made participation feel natural.
When we looked closely at how users were actually joining conversations, we saw a clear problem — the path was long, clunky, and full of distractions. Every extra tap was a chance for someone to drop off. Instead of making users hunt for the right screen, we reimagined the flow to feel seamless: open the app, tap your club, start chatting. This shift turned participation from a chore into a natural next step, removing friction and making conversations feel instantly accessible.
Here's a comparison of the user flow before and after the redesign. We moved away from a feed-based posting model and toward a club-based messaging system—simplifying the steps, clarifying the entry point, and encouraging real engagement.
With a clearer structure in place, we moved into refining the UI — making sure every screen supported this new, conversation-first experience while keeping navigation intuitive and discovery effortless.
Although Niche was still in its early stages and we didn’t have extensive quantitative data, I used interactive prototypes to conduct usability testing with five users. Observing how they interacted with the new clubs and messaging features provided valuable feedback that confirmed many of our design decisions. Users responded positively to the redesigned navigation and found it easier to discover and join clubs relevant to their interests.
The streamlined chat interface removes unnecessary steps and visual clutter, keeping conversations as the primary focus. Quick-access reply and reaction tools lower the barrier for engagement, while the persistent message bar ensures users can contribute at any moment. These changes directly supported a rise in daily active users by making participation feel effortless and ongoing discussions more inviting.
What started as a feed of scattered posts became a vibrant network of active clubs. By addressing friction points and rethinking how users discover, join, and participate in conversations, the new design turned casual visitors into active community members — and gave Niche a stronger foundation for growth.
Sending Messages
Discover Clubs
Creating a Club
User Profile
This project reinforced how powerful close collaboration between design, product, and engineering can be when tackling complex problems. It also reminded me that the best solutions come from truly listening to users and being willing to rethink what’s already been built.
One of the biggest challenges was guiding the CEO — who had designed the original, Instagram-style app — toward embracing a full redesign. By framing feedback as an opportunity for growth, I helped shift the team’s mindset from hesitation to action, building trust and momentum.
I also led a branding refresh after users flagged the outdated color palette, modernizing the product without sacrificing usability.
Most of all, this work reminded me why I love product design: creating experiences that help people connect in ways that feel effortless and meaningful. That’s the kind of impact I aim for in every project.
Phase 1 went through user testing and the results were
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