Likewise - Groups
Groups are a way for Likewise users to get together with other fans to share and discuss their favorite media.
Problem
The Likewise community was very dispersed across personal profiles, and brand new users had to create their networks person by person from scratch. We wanted a way for people to gather and rapidly gain access to communities of experts.
Outcome
Designed a robust Groups feature which granted shared spaces for genre enthusiasts, further enriched with features like Live Chats.
Hundreds of thousands of group members.
Enthusiastic engagement with Live Chats featuring authors and influencers.
My Role
Lead Designer, responsible for UX and UI work. Also collaborated with:
Designer, Justina Fu
2 Engineers
Project manager
Exploration
Problem definition
It was early 2020 and Covid was in full swing, and like every other app on the planet we were scrambling to keep up with the rapidly evolving needs of our users.
Our most engaged users were already very social, but user-directed content discovery relied largely on individual follows and manual search to bring relevant media to the surface.
New users would arrive on an app full of strangers, and would need to build their network one person at a time. The groups we created were a much lower friction way to get users to connect with each other.
Especially during lockdown, users were looking for more opportunities to connect socially, and groups offered a great way to enable that behavior.
Groups also offered a great channel to target features like Live Event at receptive users.
Iterations working toward the final layout of groups. Ultimately we stuck with the same core pattern we’d created for other pages within the app.
Core layout
We aimed for familiarity with the design of our Groups; we had an acute need to provide the waves of new users with a place to gather ASAP, and our Groups feature was designed, built, and launched under a very short timeline.
We drew inspiration for the structure of groups from popular community apps like Reddit, Facebook Groups, and Clubhouse. This helped lay a familiar foundation for users. We didn’t have time to reinvent the wheel.
Users could create the same kinds of posts they’d be making on their own profiles, plus some new more open ended types of content like Discussions. We found that posts had far higher overall engagement when posted on Groups than when ‘self posted’.
Incoming new users now had ready-made communities where they could reach out for suggestions, share their favorites, etc.
Live Events
Fast follow community feature
With Twitter and Clubhouse propelling public group voice chat experiences into the public consciousness, we saw an opportunity for the staff and influencers hosting the new Groups to make more human connections with their audiences.
Our Live Chat feature went from prototyping to a live public beta product in the space of a few weeks, meeting the fast growing demand present during the pandemic.
We had a lot of success hosting QnA discussions between featured authors and our enthusiastic population of dedicated Book fans.
Users wanted more ways to interact during live events, so we quickly added a live text chat feature.
More findings and future goals
Initial scope limited Groups to a couple dozen official groups, but users expressed a desire to create and manage their own custom groups.
Live events were powerful and popular, and I had a desire to meet user desires for more interactivity like adding favorite movies to the chat feed.
Business goals imagined sponsored monetized events.
Results and learnings
Hundreds of thousands of members
Enthusiasts engage with live events
Groups continue to be a popular feature on Likewise, with thousands of members and regularly scheduled live events. Since I left the company they’ve expanded to include sponsored groups moderated by official accounts, like a Yellowstone group run by Paramount.
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