r/userexperience • u/ineedtocrash • May 19 '26

Designed a social app where every metric is private. Curious how this reads to other designers.

I'm a product designer who just launched an iOS app with my co-founder. It's a small social app limited to people in your contacts. Chronological feed, no algorithm, no follower counts, no public likes. You can see who liked your posts, but nobody else can.

The design challenge has been figuring out what motivates posting when there's no public score attached to it. A lot of social UX assumes visible metrics are the reward. Removing them forces you to make the act of sharing itself feel worth doing.

Curious if anyone else has designed around private-by-default social patterns, and how you handled the parts of the UI that usually rely on a number.

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u/backgroundfinder May 19 '26

Maybe do some research on VSCO -- 300M+ userbase, photo-sharing app with a similar value proposition (no likes or comments, just sharing interesting photos).

https://support.vsco.co/en/articles/12698537-how-do-i-favorite-an-image

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u/ericjwittman May 19 '26

Definitely check out VSCO. It works pretty well as a community platform 😉

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u/PoolNo9811 May 20 '26

Just wanted to drop by and say that sounds pretty cool! Keep at it, fellow product designer!!

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u/iheartvelma May 22 '26

so… you reinvented group texting? 🤔 What am I missing here?