Design Studios
4 million players designed alone.Belonging had to feel like a warm room.
A 30,000-person Facebook group proved players didn't want to design alone — they wanted to celebrate each other's work. Research, frameworks, and a 19-screen prototype for a social feature that had to feel like home, not a competitive ladder — built in three weeks.
Context & Challenge
Venue is a mobile interior design game with over 4 million downloads. Players design rooms, submit them for anonymous peer voting, wait two hours, and get a star rating. That's the entire social layer.
But 30,000 players organically built a Facebook group. They weren't asking for chat. They were sharing designs and celebrating each other's work — doing something the app never gave them space for.
The founder's north star: D30 retention through social attachment. Not engagement tricks. Real belonging.
The Design Challenge
Build a group social feature for a game whose brand is calm, elegant, no pressure — without turning it into a competitive guild. No chat. No streaks. No "last active" timestamps. No leaderboards. Understandable in 10 seconds. Woven into the existing game loop.
30,000 players built a community the app never gave them space for.
MyRole&Approach
This was a three-week design sprint coordinated by Yummy Labs in partnership with Superbloom and their founder, Emily. I owned the full design arc — research through prototype — working from a shared brief while making every framework, screen, and pixel decision independently — with Claude and his codes as my copilot.
Phase 1
Understand
Game audit, player psychology, alignment
Phase 2
Frame
JTBD stories, KPI mapping, constraints
Phase 3
Explore
6 wireframes, reference analysis, hybrid
Phase 4
Build
36 components, 19 screens, prototype
Phase 5
Present
Narrative, walkthrough, phased roadmap
TheWork
Discovery
I mapped every point-earning activity, every social surface, and every natural gathering moment. The audit revealed that the moments with the highest emotional charge had zero social presence. Players finish a design they're proud of and have nowhere to put that pride. They earn five stars and nobody knows. Then I built Beth — not a persona, but a psychological needs profile grounded in Self-Determination Theory. Three needs, ten facets. The key insight: Beth doesn't leave because of one bad experience. A dozen small unmet needs compound into "I don't feel like opening it today."
Activity Audit
Beth's Psych Profile
Moments Mapping
JTBD Mapping
KPI Mapping
Wordless Connections
Integration Mapping
Discovery Flow
Beth doesn't leave because of one bad experience.
A dozen small unmet needs compound into ' I don't feel like opening it today .'
Exploration
Three directions for the Studio Home. Three for weekly goal progress. Each tested a different balance of warmth, visibility, and momentum. The Hybrid cherry-picked the best of each: skyline as emotional anchor in the postcard, a single stat line that only goes up, progress ripple with milestone notches but no percentage, anonymous gallery with a private coral dot only Beth can see, and progressive postcards that fill from grayscale to color. Every week gets one. "A Cozy Week" — not "Incomplete."
Key Design Decisions
Contribution visibility vs. comparison trap
Anonymous gallery. Only Beth sees her own work — a small coral dot, private to her.
Option A — Named gallery with scores
Each design shows the creator's name and star rating. Transparent but risks turning the gallery into a ranking.
Option B ✓ — Anonymous gallery with private indicator
All designs shown anonymously. Only Beth sees which one is hers — a small coral dot, private to her. No names, no scores, no rankings.
The call: Anonymity and the private indicator mitigate the comparison instinct. The gallery celebrates the collective — not individuals.
Weekly momentum vs. mid-week anxiety
Three layers: skyline filling, stat line that only goes up, ripple bar with notches. No percentage label.
Option A — Single progress indicator
One bar or number showing weekly progress. Clear but fragile — mid-week dips feel like failure.
Option B ✓ — Three-layer momentum defense
Skyline filling visually, collective stat that only goes up, ripple bar with milestone notches. Progress as a feeling, not a math problem.
The call: No percentage label — you see progress as a feeling, not a math problem.
Warmth of return vs. guilt of absence
No timestamps. No auto-kick. "Your studio missed you" — not "You missed 3 contributions."
Option A — Light guilt mechanics
'Last active' timestamps, gentle streak counters, 'your team needs you' nudges. Industry standard. Effective short-term.
Option B ✓ — Zero guilt, persistent home
No timestamps. No auto-kick. No absence penalties. The Studio is a persistent home, not a contract. Clean weekly slate on return.
The call: What we deliberately didn't build matters as much as what we did.
Final Designs
What we deliberately didn't build matters as much as what we did.
Outcome&Impact
19 screens
Full feature flow from discovery through weekly lifecycle
36 components
Variable-bound, auto-layout Figma component system
Live prototype
19-screen tappable prototype with Supabase data collection
SDT × JTBD × Octalysis
Psychology-grounded framework connecting player needs to business KPIs
Design sprint deliverable — not a shipped product. Outcomes are strategic. Phase 1 scoped to the smallest version that proves the hypothesis. Connections, player-created Studios, and Seasons are on the roadmap — but only if Phase 1 earns them.
Phase 1 proved belonging works.
Everything after earns its way in.
— Reflection