Showing the True app, an authentic social network

True - Authentic Social Networking

by John Wayne Hill

A new social network, private by default, for friends and family.

Role V.P. of Design + IC Design

Team 1.5 Designers, 1 PM, CEO

Timeline ~10 weeks

True’s concept was to take the social media model and make it private by default, so that a user’s posts are not public. Further, we wanted to change the businesses model of advertising people’s data. True allows you to connect with friends, family, and people who share similar interests with you.

With our main feature Threads, people can post to a feed with a specific topic or a small group of people. All posts are private to just the people within the thread. With full functionality around commenting, replies, reactions and more, True provided an alternative to traditional social media.

Keep scrolling to view the Onboarding Case Study, and then check our more features, products, and designs for True.

About

Background and Team

I joined True just after an initial launch of the app, which still lacked many features. The company had about 12 engingeers, 2 designers, and a product manager. I grew the design team to 6 designers plus a contractor to help scale our feature set at the pace the CEO desired.

One of the main projects we undertook was to redesign the onboarding process due to a reset in the product strategy. We wanted to focus on newly invited users with a personalized onboard flow. Further, we needed to concretely set our app apart from Facebook and others through our unique value propisition, which the existing onboarding experiece failed to due.

illustration of 3 diverse people within a circle

Overview

Highlights

Key moments and responsibilities

Lead and owned all design activities, worldwide

Grew the design team from 3 to 6+ designers

Responsible for the overall strategy, vision, and design across all platforms

Implemented organizational changes and new processes for efficiency and predictability

Lead product and design teams from being behind to a six-month lead time of new products and innovations

Consistently dove into Figma and helped to deliver designs to engineering

Problem Statement

How do we showcase the value of True (private & authentic social) and get users toward the right actions?

True Onboarding

Product Stategy

While conducting user research for the Onboarding project, we found a set of users on Facebook that had a small following or group and were concenred about thier privacy given Facebook's issues. These people were looking for a new home for thier community, but couldn't find one. True was the perfect ap for them! By bringing on these community leaders, we could also bring along thier followers and very quickly grow our user base. So we reworked our produt strategy to focus on these leaders and thier followers. This new startegy greatly affected our Onboarding project so we focus on a customized, and personalized onboarding for invited community members.

True Onboarding Designs

Screens showing user onboarding for the True app.

Once the app is downloaded, we present a splash screen with the True branding. When users tap on Sign Up, we provide a little blurb about True.

After the personalized opening screens, users input their email and information. Each step where we ask for information, we tell users how and why we need that particular information.

True user onboarding screens including adding a photo and inviting friends

Users then upload a photo of themselves. A real name and photo help people to be more authentic and real. We tweaked the copy towards a fun and friendly tone. Following the photo, we start making a user threads (in the background) and take a moment to showcase the value of our product with two screens and a loading bar. This helps users feel the app is working for them, and keeps people engaged with the two screens of content.

Inviting friends screens showcasing how easy it is to invite others to join you

A part of any social network is inviting your friends and family. We designed a custom selector with motion design and a ‘shelf’ of friends that fill up as you invite them. We wanted people to invite at least 3 friends, so we designed “empty” spaces to encourage this. Having at least 3 friends greatly increases chances that people will have friends to engage with on our app.

Ending the user onboarding, we showcase three quick education tooltips

After the onboarding, our CEO thought it was important to teach people how to utilize our product. I disagreed. So we launched this feature to test it’s use and conduct user research to see how much education we might need. These three screens comprise the entire education and focus on the essentials only. Users may also quickly tap the screen to flow through the education modules. Each is personalized to the individual user.