🏆 1st place, Google Studio Forward 2023
A kinder, wordless social app where you show up as a blob.
A concept from a Google design sprint: a gentler social space for people who feel unsafe or exhausted being seen online.
A concept from a Google design sprint: a gentler social space for people who feel unsafe or exhausted being seen online.
Every team in the sprint started from the same prompt: subcultures created through social media can leave marginalized communities feeling excluded. Our first job was to find out who that actually meant, and why.
Google ran the sprint with us: a team of four, two days, five phases from an open prompt to a tested concept. We researched who was being excluded, framed the questions worth solving, sketched fast, voted, and built.
People of color, low income individuals, people with disabilities, women, and the LGBTQ community, to name a few.
Cyberbullying, lack of representation, and negative stereotypes.
How might we create a fun way to explore common interests in a safe online space for everyone?
Before deciding what to build, we wrote a persona out of the research, so the decisions had someone to answer to. We called her Isabel.
A Gen Z undergraduate who likes exploring new things and has interests that are genuinely her own.
To share and explore what she is into, with people who are into it too.
She is always anxious about cyberbullying, so sharing openly never feels free.
A safe space to share and explore her interests with like-minded people.
So we stopped trying to moderate the harm, and designed out the thing that causes it.
Physical attributes and written speech leave the product entirely. Nothing about how you look, and nothing you type, can be turned against you. A mobile app fit where Gen Z already spends its time.
Everyone is a non-anthropomorphic blob, so there are no human characteristics left to build a stereotype on.
People communicate by sharing content rather than writing, which takes cyberbullying and harmful speech off the table.
You find people through what you are into, which is what makes the connection a genuine one.
The experience is built around four low-pressure moments, ending with a blob that visibly evolves as you engage, a gentle, earned sense of growth instead of a follower count.
At Google Studio Forward, out of a field of more than 100 designers, judged on concept, craft, and human impact.
The win took us to Google’s San Francisco office to present the concept to their UX team.