Wanderflow
Roles
The first UX/UI Designer; Collaborate with the founder, 2 designers, and front-end team closely
Responsibilities
Heuristic evaluation; UX design; UI design; User interviews; User testing
Time
Sep 2023- Jan 2024 ~5 months, part-time
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The Content Overload Dilemma
Today's digital readers are drowning in a sea of content yet struggling to find what truly matters to them. After interviewing numerous content consumers, we identified some main critical challenges they face:
Information Overload
Users are overwhelmed by too much unfocused content, making it hard to find what's truly relevant to them.
Shallow Engagement
Current platforms limit users to passive reading and superficial social interactions, preventing both deep content exploration and meaningful connections.
Solution
Swipe for Unpredictable Discovery
Each swipe reveals a new topic in full-screen immersive view. This unpredictable discovery turns browsing into an adventure, while the familiar swipe gesture keeps you exploring what's next.
Chat to Explore Content with Maximum Personalization
Start with custom prompts to dive into topics. Highlight any sentence to get AI insights about it. This interactive chat turns passive reading into active exploration- easy to understand at your own pace.
Enhancing Social Engagement through Community Contributions
Users can view and contribute their own answers to prompts, enriching the discussion with diverse and high quality human perspectives.
Impact
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The Content Consumption Paradox
Through competitive analysis and user interviews, we focused on a fundamental tension in how people consume content today:
The Active Learning Dilemma
Users have the curiosity to actively explore and understand complex topics, but current platforms force them into passive consumption.
The Comprehension Gap
Users crave more contexts but have to abandon complex articles. No tools exist to bridge the gap between curiosity and comprehension and leave curiosities unsolved.
Opportunity Brought By AI
Narrow Down: Reimagine News Reading with AI
News readers have various needs
Sometimes people skim headlines, other times they dive deep into articles. Sometimes they know little or much of a topic, which creates personalized needs for content consumption.
News exemplifies information challenges
It contains tremendous time-sensitive information that exemplifies information overload.
❓How might we transform news reading into an AI-powered experience that is personalized, exploratory, and interactive?
❓How about using traditional news apps as a baseline?
High Familiarity, Low Learning Curve
Similar UI patterns leverages users' existing knowledge, reducing cognitive burden and onboarding friction. It's called "Benchmark Alignment" strategy.
May Attract Their Users as Seed Users
Finding seed users is critical at this stage. Branding it as "Twitter With AI", could leverage Twitter's massive user base to attract seed users.
First MVP
I made a video to showcase the core flows. Users can:
Use prompts to let AI generate digested content using chosen topics and sources
Interact with in-article content with AI assistance
View articles and in-article thoughts created by other users
Investor Feedback: Not Attention-catching
Attracting funds is a main goal at this stage. Our Twitter-like design failed to create immediate visual distinction. Investors wanted something that would grab attention instantly and clearly communicate our unique approach from the first glance.
Scope Too Broad for an MVP
We started too big – trying to build a product that did everything for everyone. This made it hard to focus our limited resources and made the product unnecessarily complex. We learned that this wasn't the right approach for an early-stage startup.
❓What truly makes the MVP?
Initially, we defined our MVP as a feature-complete product. However, we learned that an MVP just needs the viral features that resonate with users. Focusing on the core features that would truly excite users would help us create a simpler but more impactful product.
❓How might we make our MVP go viral?
Key Pivot: Focus on Gen Z and Killer Features
What Gen Z Likes
Fast, Simple, Immersive, and Fun
Gen Z loves platforms like TikTok because they make content exploration quick and fun. They want digital experiences that can keep them hooked.
Personalization and Freedom
Gen Z doesn't want the same content as everyone else. They expect platforms to understand their interests and show them personally relevant content, while giving them control over their experience.
Needs for Meaningful Connections
Gen Z wants more than just basic social features. They're looking for real conversations and connect with people who share their interests in meaningful ways.
Align Product Strategy to Avoid Reinventing the Wheels
When I started, the founder wanted quick mockups of every feature. But I soon realized we were getting lost in details while our product vision was still unclear. After several overhauls, I decided to push the founder to discuss the product strategy map with me to set priorities for our goals.
The strategy map focused our MVP on crucial features and became my decision-making tool for evaluating all design requests.
Home Page Redesign for Gen Z
Swipe-Based Topic Switching
A familiar swipe-up gesture enables quick, intuitive topic browsing — echoing the addictive flow of platforms like TikTok.
Immersive Full-Screen Design
One topic per screen removes clutter and keeps users focused, creating a visually immersive experience.
Tailored Prompts for Entry
Users can start from two entry points (one for beginners, one for experts) to match different levels of content familiarity while avoiding cognitive burden.
Design Iteration 1: Integrate Interactions with Conversation Flow
Design Iteration 2: Enhance Clarity of Hierarchy in Conversation Flow
40%↑
Satisfaction rating compared to traditional news app
Mid 6-Figures
Seed Funding
"The swipe feature is addictive—I kept wanting to see what's next"
"With AI's help, I can actually understand complex topics now."
What is a True MVP
Defining a MVP is a tricky but crucial task. It's about simplifying or removing additional features to keep only the most essential ones that demonstrate value to the market.
Test PMF Before Getting Lost in Details
After repeated overhauls, I learned the value of minimalism. Rather than refining details prematurely, it's crucial to determine the least effort needed to test P MF before further investment.
Design for Chatbots and Gen Z
From this project, I gained insights into conversational UI design and Gen Z user preferences, enhancing my skills in crafting user experiences tailored to their unique characteristics.
