In my final year at UC Berkeley, I wanted to apply my learnings to a passion project; so I decided to take a look at TikTok, with the simple goal of uncovering and solving a problem for users that would improve and alter their experience.

Research

1. Generative user interviews

→ 5/5 users expressed that they struggle to check their DMs, despite wanting to

2. Evaluative user interviews (i.e. to figure out why)

→ Navigating to the inbox is inconvenient

→ The inbox is polluted with noise, including placeholder DMs with new friends ("Say hi to Emma!") and when a friend has liked your message → The flow is disjointed: users have to switch between two screens to (A) watch the videos their friends send and (B) read/reply to their corresponding messages