UNFOLD

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  Layered Structure: Intention First

Key Issues that UNFOLD tackles:

• Digital platforms often show homogeneous content because algorithms prioritize what’s already popular and familiar. This creates echo chambers, predictable feeds, and a lack of genuine discovery and creativity.
• Standardized, homogeneous digital interfaces: The layouts are identical - infinite scroll, grids, trending tabs, making different platforms feel interchangeable. This limits creativity, exploration, and new interaction behaviors, as the movement of the fingers is all identical.
• Trend-driven conformity that reduces individuality: Social media can accelerate trends so quickly that viewers and creators end up dressing the same, visiting the same places, posting the same aesthetics. Furthermore, the recommendation system based on likes pressures users to conform rather than express themselves.

It is not:

• Not just social media (it is not about posting and following, it is about exploring and connecting ideas
• Not a feed (there’s no infinite scroll, no likes, which breaks the homogenous concepts that current social platforms embody)
• Not algorithm-driven (it uses conceptual clustering, not engagement metrics)

It is:

• A spatial interface for discovering ideas, creators, and perspectives,
• It is a new digital behavior: it invites users to build paths through content, like intellectual journeys
• A standalone app that reimagines digital exploration through spatial curiosity mapping.
• Target users: creators, explorers, designers, and any users who are tired of the feed

What we did well:

• Using both primary (interview&survey) and secondary resources (TED Talk) to support the problem statement.
• Rethinking the issue of scrolling as trying to discover more, but in a more structured and meaningful way.

What we have learnt:

• The Product Design Diamond - Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver
• Research is important in product design. We may like the product that we are building, but it is 1000x more important to ensure that our target customers will use and like it. It is important to understand their feelings. We should also demonstrate the prototype to the end users, with a primary purpose of getting feedback (instead of trying to impress them).
• When you are creating another indie social media app (such as Retro), we are not trying to gain all the customers for TikTok. Instead, we should try to form an indirect competition, where we provide specific functions to the users whose wants are not yet fully satisfied by TikTok.
• It is important to consider the marginal user. We imagine a marginal user who has an extremely short attention span. Considering this as an important constraint helps us to take a step back and think who we are designing this app for, not trying to attract the "poor souls" that are deeply trapped by the algorithms, but guiding them to understand their intentions first, when scrolling no longer satisfies. In a nutshell, we acknowledge him, but refuse to let him define the system’s values.
• We need to get the users to use our app before they can fully absorb the ideas that we are trying to convey. Therefore, if we have a relatively new concept, we should make the UI easy for navigation and exploration. It is also okay if we solve a problem that has already been addressed to some extent, but we use a different approach.

More Thinking and Future Implications:

• A lot of teenagers and young adults would still scroll through social media platforms, without the expectation of truly learning something. Here is a customer interview: "I don't think I go on social media to 'explore' in a traditional sense. It's more like I just want to see what's presented to me, and I don't 'chase' meaningful content. I simply expect it to appear at some point, and I think, 'oh, this is interesting.' I think homogeneity is more like a proven model. Almost all clothing chains use filtering systems, and they are effective at fulfilling the specific task of helping me choose efficiently."
• By setting the initial layer into six fixed categories, we are still limiting the user's ability to discover their intent to some extent. Some categories also have the problem of being too vague, such as "lifestyle" versus "experience". We intend to guide users to explore the endless topics inside those broad categories, instead of us just generating a niche topic for them and forcing them to consume it. However, this idea needs to be polished further.
• In the future, we can work on the technical machine learning portion of this project to categorize the videos by embedding texts into 384-dimension vectors, for instance. We can also focus on structuring the development through a Product Management lens, such as creating MVPs and PRDs to refine the goals and features.

Built With

• figma
• powerpoint