Start-up

Tribes

"Empowering self-discovery and promoting meaningful connections through personalised AI and curated search. Tribes is a decentralised network and universal clipboard of our personal archives. Add friends to your Tribe and search from this trusted content pool. Discover your friends multidimensionality and get search results that are personalised and curated from those whose opinions we value. Save time and get straight to all that is relevant."

Position

UX/UI Designer

Team

Victor — Co-founder
Hank — Software Engineer
Me!

My role

MVP Development
UX/UI Introduction
Concepting
Prototyping

Project Duration

4 Months

What to expect

15–20 minute read

I led the UX/UI development of Tribes — an interactive social app built around personalised content, shared media, and meaningful connections. Working closely with Victor and Hank, the goal was to align design principles with the start-up's vision and shape an MVP ready to present to investors. The big question going in: what even is an MVP, and where do I start?

Objectives

Develop an MVP
Research existing social media platforms
Desk and user research
Sketching and ideating
Develop lo and hi-fidelity prototypes
Weekly collaborative meetings
Identifying effective methods for gesture-based interactions
Interactive and scalable product

Challenges

What's an MVP?
Finding time between projects and study
Future-proofing design decisions
Keeping in mind how mobile UI will parallel to VR
Proposing improvements and validating design decisions

Jump to section

Research Ideation Feedback & Testing Hi-fidelity Final Reflection

How I got here

I had the amazing opportunity to collaborate with Victor and Hank who are leading the mission to empower users with a personalised curation of content, discovering, and building meaningful connections with other users, friends, and family.

Through frequently visiting a local café I ended up connecting with the owner, Victor. He was interested in my projects and I shared with him previous and work in progress work. A few months down the road, he ended up recruiting me to lead the UX/UI development.

I was super interested with the vision of this app being grown into a large social network between users, friends, and family. With plans to bring it into virtual reality and using AI to guide and assist users.

With the rapid growth of AI and how it is effecting our daily lives in different ways, this was a perfect opportunity for me to jump on board and learn how AI can be used as a learning tool.

Next up: Project Brief →

Research

It is emphasised by Victor to have gesture controls as the main interaction pattern as part of future-proofing.

Conducting desk research on successful social media platforms and discovering what makes their product polished and defined
Discovering what patterns, design systems, and navigations these platforms share
Products and games that use virtual reality

Personalised algorithms keep users engaged
Short-term content has minimal cognitive effort, keeping user attention
Social validation, likes, shares, and reposts

Simple and guided onboarding
Build familiar systems so users don't have to re-learn
Building with accessibility such as colours and fonts
Approachable and familiar colours
Tons of space for breathing

Future steps: Since there was time constraints, I was unable to conduct own user interviews or surveys.

Next up: Ideation →

Ideation

My design principles:

Victor

"Please add these as screens, a homepage, group page, content exploration and adding users!"

With direction and clarity, these sketches will contain the contents below:

Structure
Component layout
Content layout
Interaction patterns, like gesture controls
Navigation
User flow
Pinpointing potential pain points
Create a task for Victor and Hank to complete

Victor

"Are we able to make the home screen different from traditional pages, such as a quadrant view?"

Results weren't satisfactory, not much inspiration to go off so I decided to create my own rendition of a page that meets requirements and align with UX and UI principles. It was a challenge, but a fun one.

Sketches: For clearer insight for me, I decided to develop two strong sketches into lo-fidelity prototyping to present animations and test gesture controls on a real mobile device.

Sketches

Next up: Feedback and Testing →

Feedback & Testing

"…Because gesture controls are key, I wanted to observe how users would interact."

To achieve this, I presented 2 strong lo-fidelity prototypes (named proto_a and proto_b.) and created a task for Victor and Hank. I created these tasks to observe and study their behaviour and attitude.

The task was simple — I handed my phone with the prototypes to experience the authentic gesture controls, from point A (the homepage) to point B (the contents).

Through observing their actions, I knew what prototype caught their eye as they were constantly interacting with it as if it was a mini-game and not having to interrupt and guide them on how to complete the task. Satisfied with the outcome, proto_a was sent in to hi-fidelity prototyping.

The highlighted screens were prioritised in prototyping

MiPage

Central hub
Your curation
Users can see your 'MiPage'
Adding content

Tribe

Your group
See shared content
Share content
Message members
Cycle through multiple Tribes
Add members

Media

Content exploration
Liked and shared content
See what other Tribe members have liked and shared

Add Users

Find and add registered users
Find mutual friends

Next up: Lo-fidelity Prototyping →

Hi-fidelity Prototyping

The MiPage and Tribes page are prioritised because the features will be what separates itself from other social media platforms — integrating complex UX and UI decisions. The media and adding user page is lower on the list as it is not the feature that will capture the audience.

Due to time restrictions, making a refined and polished style guide was a difficult task. However, since it was a guide for just myself, it was easier to create and follow.

Constraints

Due to limited time, making a polished and refined style guide would have proven difficult, however since the guide was just for my own viewing, I didn't have to create a guide where developers would have required very specific styles and spacing styles. So a mini style-guide was developed anyway for myself to have a direction.

Style Guide

Victor

"Are we able to add a quora push animation? The user's friends receiving a notification from the user asking a question about dining suggestions?"

MiPage Tribe Media Content User Discovery

New additions: Adding a Quora push animation, showcasing users receiving a notification from a Tribe member.

Centre Navigation

Located in the MiPage, the centre navigation will be the interactive element with gesture controls. The purpose of this demonstration and achieving its brief, is to go from the homepage to your Tribe and from there, the user will —

On tap → Expand

Cycle through different Tribes Content exploration Discover users Add users Ask other users and search for recommendations

Drag and hold

Tribes

Final

Final Deliverables

Video Coming Soon

Reflection

Working on Tribes taught me that gesture-based UX isn’t just a cool interaction — it’s a promise. If the prototypes don’t clearly communicate affordances and signifiers, users hesitate, and the whole experience loses momentum.

I also learned how much clarity matters during collaboration. Aligning with Victor and Hank early helped me translate business goals into interaction priorities, but the time constraints meant I didn’t run as many user interviews as I wanted — and that’s the main thing I would improve.

If I had more time, I’d iterate through additional usability sessions, refine the feedback loop around errors and misunderstandings, and push the hi-fidelity stage further so the animations feel as intentional as the layout.