Problem
Zipstrr combined recording, group projects, messaging, notifications, editing, publishing, and profile discovery. The ambition was useful, but a first-time user could not be asked to decode all of it before recording a clip.
Memoory: Social Mobile App
Memoory is a crowdsourced mobile creation platform for millennials. The project required a complete redesign of the existing app, starting from a full UX audit through user testing, persona development, and iterative design sprints. The goal was to rise above the social media noise and create an engaging creative content sharing experience.
Mobile App Design, UX/UI
Reframed Zipstrr, a seed-funded social mobile app, into Memoory: a clearer consumer story from first-run onboarding to collaborative creation.
- Role
- Lead Product Designer
- Team
- CEO, CTO, lead developer, volunteer testers
- Timeframe
- Several design sprints across multiple months
- What I owned
- User research, wireframing, logo and brand, UI design, and the design system.
Problem · Solution
A social mobile app with too many jobs still had to feel instantly familiar.
Solution
Keep the mobile social grammar people already understood, then make the product simpler, more sequenced, and more ownable through onboarding, IA, capture, collaboration, and a new brand system.
UX audit
I started with the shipped app, the spec archive, and the actual flow debt.
I audited the shipped app, stakeholder questions, data model, and required flows before touching visual polish.
Qualitative research
Memoory moved from generic video sharing toward event-led creators who capture and share social moments.
Methods
A formative research loop: structure, behavior, then visual system.
Evidence stack
Broad archive, tight signal across research, structure, tests, and UI production.
Final UI exports131
mobile states reconciled
Wireframe states45
flow before styling
Test screens23
comprehension run
Flow maps10
IA paths mapped
Method mix
Flow before polish, with maps, wireframes, tests, and UI exports read as one system.
209artifacts
Final UI exports131
Wireframes45
Test screens23
Flow maps10
Formative test
Find comprehension breaks, not declare a winner.
7
respondents
23
test screens
5
prompts per screen
1h 30m
median response window
Signal matrix
Familiar mechanics carried; unclear state and collaboration language created the breaks.
OnboardingMixed
Too many launch choices before value.
ProjectsWeak
Feed and collaboration objects blurred.
RecorderMixed
Record to review needed stronger status feedback.
ChatStrong
Familiar messaging patterns carried well.
Heuristic focus
Visibility of status, recognition over recall, and first-run load.
Audience lens
Event-led creators, not generic video sharing.
Wireframing
Wireframes helped validate core concepts fast, including the need for clear onboarding steps.
Research read
23 tested screens and 45 wireframes showed the break: users needed value before collaboration complexity.
Insights
What the evidence changed.
The synthesis reduced the work to four product decisions: simplify entry, clarify collaboration, separate capture states, and keep social mechanics recognizable.
Design direction
Familiar social mechanics, lower first-run friction, clearer capture states, and a brand system strong enough to make Memoory feel like its own place.
Design principles
Three rules kept the product from becoming too much app too soon.
How we worked
From broad archive to focused social mobile loop.
Experience flow
The app-wide journey connected discovery, capture, collaboration, and return paths.
The flow archive showed one core system: every tab could lead into watching, recording, contributing, publishing, or coming back through notifications.
Source flow map
From onboarding to capture, project publishing, and return loops.
Welcome
A guided path into the feed.
Welcome 01
Welcome 02
Start
Code entry
Topics
Follow
First-time user experience: a paced bridge instead of a feature dump: one clear action, visible escape routes, and a prepared first feed.
Final result
A complete social mobile system across setup, feed, projects, capture, messaging, and profile.
01. Welcome
The opening moment frames the product as a memory-making social app.
Wrapping up
End to end design and full ui specs
Familiar interaction patterns needed a stronger identity layer: specs, icons, app mark, loader, and launch collateral.
First-run onboarding.
Mobile app design overview
Sharing experience
Content recording & Editing
Next pass
The next pass would push the first-session loop even harder.
Two more months
The next pass would go deeper on one metric: time to first meaningful action. For Memoory, that means welcome, interests, first relevant story, and first recording.
- Tidjane
Shipped with
Sources
- 1
Apple Human Interface Guidelines, Onboarding: keep first-run short and lean on gestures people already know. A novel gesture at launch is friction the app has not earned yet.
developer.apple.com
- 2
Andrew Chen on the cold start problem for social products: make the app useful to one user before the network arrives, so the first session is not an empty feed.
andrewchen.com
- 3
Nielsen Norman Group's formative usability-testing guidance supports small iterative rounds for finding behavior patterns early, before design decisions become expensive to change.
nngroup.com
- 4
Nielsen Norman Group's usability heuristics framed the synthesis: visibility of system status, match to real-world mental models, consistency, recognition over recall, and error recovery.
nngroup.com
- 5
Akendi's Experience Thinking lens informed the case-study framing across product, content, brand, and service experience rather than treating screens as isolated UI artifacts.
akendi.com
More work
Other projects worth a look.
