Context
This was a design exercise for Dopelist, focused on improving the Home experience and the “Saved by Friends” feature.
The goal was to increase engagement and reduce confusion in a product that combines content discovery, saving, and social interaction.
The challenge was to rethink how users navigate between discovering new content, managing their own collections, and creating new items.
Problem definition
The current experience mixed multiple mental models into a single space.
Key issues:
- Home mixed discovery, personal content, and creation in one place
- Discovery and ownership competed for attention
- The existing creation flow was not designed for longer or AI-assisted interactions
This created confusion and reduced clarity in how users interact with the product.
Approach & Decisions
I approached the problem by separating core user intents: discovery, ownership, and creation.
Structure
- Split the experience into clearer areas (Home, personal space, search)
- Reduced cognitive load by assigning a primary role to each surface
Discovery
- Introduced resurfacing patterns (e.g. “Remember these?”, “Saved by friends”) to bring back relevant content
- Prioritized social proof and contextual recommendations to support engagement
Creation
- Consolidated creation into a single, intentional entry point
- Designed an expandable composer to support multi-step and AI-assisted flows
- Allowed users to continue browsing while creation is in progress
Interaction model
- Designed a swipe-based interaction for lightweight decision-making (save vs skip)
- Reduced friction by removing unnecessary actions (e.g. “like” without long-term value)
- Avoided heavy onboarding, enabling users to learn through interaction
Outcome
The proposal resulted in:
- A clearer separation between discovery and personal content
- A more structured and scalable creation flow
- Improved visibility of social and contextual signals
- A more engaging and lightweight interaction model
After completing the exercise, I reviewed the product’s later evolution.
Several principles explored in this proposal (e.g. clearer separation of discovery, personal library and creation, persistent in-app chat space for creation instead of external Whatsapp) align with how the product has since evolved.
Current app experience
