WIP Grom Social
Role - Senior UX Design Lead
Product Design & Strategy, User Experience (Mobile), Visual Identity, Social Media Platform, Storytelling, Feature Development, Design Systems & Documentation, Information Architecture, Art Direction, Content Strategy, UI (Mobile) Design
Overview
Grom Social is a safe, fun, and adventurous social networking app for kids. The Grom Social platform has quickly and organically grown over time. As a result many aspects of the user experience were not achieving their full potential or delivering the best possible user experience to kids and parents.
In addition to this, the look and feel of the UI was inconsistent and didn't follow user interface best practices, which made the entire experience less intuitive and potentially more challenging to build upon over time.
My Work
An opportunity existed to audit, rethink and refine the Grom Social user experience in such a way that made the product easier and more enjoyable to use, increasing engagement, building confidence, and attracting new users.
I overhauled and refined both the entire look and feel of the Grom Social design system and user interface —making it more intuitive, fun and engaging, extensible, and on brand.
An in depth audit of the original experience
I conducted an in-depth audit of the existing experience and met with the founder and key stakeholders in order to gain a deeper understanding of the user experience and where opportunities for improvement existed.
Following the audit, I facilitated a work session with key stakeholders aimed at reviewing our insights and recommendations to collaboratively prioritize where we should focus our UX efforts.
A new business strategy and user experience overhaul
Grom was in danger of becoming too generic, not being able to compete with social media giants like TikTok but also not currently offering a distinctive enough experience. They needed to set themselves apart, and I helped them do just that.
I proposed a major shift in interactivity. Changing their problematic photo-based avatars into a character-driven, customizable avatar. We gamified the kid's user experiences, adding a store, collectables, an achievement system, and future monetization strategies.
I overhauled the app's fundamental navigation system, key workflows, layouts and reorganized their content hierarchy. We designed a parent log-in and portal where parents can verify accounts and follow their child's activity.
All of this was presented and eventually refined into an exhaustive account of all screens and user flows in high-fidelity comps.
Art direction and a content strategy
On top of the UX overhaul I also led the shift into a new art direction that would compliment the new interactive model. In addition to a new color palette, logo, and standardized UI I also directed the brand into a more modern, youthful and edgy space. We shifted from photography to 2D design to eventually 3D, allowing for face tracking, AR and animation capabilities.
Design system and Documentation
By the end of the extensive program we had built an entirely new design system from the ground up. Educating their team on the merits of Figma we shaped their old, unorganized design process into a shared, centralized knowledge base for the whole design team.
My last task was to take the new design system, site map, writing style, user flows, animations and responsive layouts and document everything.
