Bringing life (and likes) back to an investor’s feed
Published at:
Sep 29, 2025
Read:
9 minutes
My role:
Product Designer
Investors want a space to share opinions, discover like-minded people, follow market trends, and stay in the loop — not just through numbers, but through real voices.
For the business, it’s about staying connected with clients, building awareness, creating a habit of daily use, and growing the product ecosystem.
A social network brings these goals together — and turns passive users into an active community.
The vision was strong — but engagement was declining, users were losing interest, and even our most active core audience began to stagnate.
The Problems:
📉 Users were leaving the social feed
🔻 Activity levels were dropping
🧊 Trust in investing declined due to geopolitical events
🥊 A bigger, more established competitor drew attention away
😐 The content was becoming repetitive and boring
The Challenges:
⚡ Full redesign under tight deadlines, without a working design system
📌 Limited team capacity, with constant prioritization trade-offs
🚫 Figma was blocked, and all files had to be moved to a new environment
👉 These constraints didn’t slow us down — they pushed us to be smarter, faster, and more adaptable.
We started by identifying key UX issues we could realistically address as a team. After that, we generated hypotheses, prioritized them, and moved into the design phase.
Next came reviews and what I jokingly called “self-censorship” — we had to navigate multiple layers of approvals from internal stakeholders. One of the most important milestones was presenting the homepage concept to the board and the CEO.
Once approved, we conducted usability testing and quantitative research, then created a step-by-step implementation plan.
At first, there was no onboarding at all — the social network lived inside one of the app’s tabs, and users were left to figure it out on their own. After analyzing user behavior and seeing low engagement metrics, I hypothesized that we weren’t communicating the product’s value.
I started showing mockups and asking for feedback. That’s when it hit me: what’s obvious to us isn’t obvious to new users. So I shifted the goal: instead of just introducing the product, let’s solve a small, immediate problem for the user — and show how our social network helps.
The idea: borrow the structure of paid product onboarding, but without the sales pitch — just value, clearly shown.
I studied best practices, articles, and examples from other industries, and came up with a set of core principles for onboarding:
• 🎯 Personalization
• 💡 Immediate problem-solving
• 📱 Showing interface in context
• ⏱ Short, clear, not overwhelming
• 🎬 Emotional support and anticipation
And it worked. Just weeks after launching onboarding, registrations tripled — and the number remained stable, reaching a new plateau.
Before onboarding | Before onboarding | After onboarding and key updates |
|---|---|---|
Engagement Rate (ER) | 4.6% | 7.1% |
Retention | 21% | 34% |
This simple onboarding feature made a huge impact — creating a smoother first experience and increasing long-term value.
Just as we were rolling out improvements, the design leadership hit pause — a full redesign was coming. That sent us into three months of uncertainty: should we keep building if everything would soon be redone?
The original plan was: I design the key pages → we align → we research → the TS team creates patterns → a new design system follows.
But in reality, TS started building the DS in parallel, often without aligning with real product needs. I knew if we moved quickly, my screens could influence the design system.
So in just two weeks, I designed 80% of the entire social network. Meanwhile, the homepage design alone took three months of internal negotiations as stakeholder priorities kept shifting. The whole project became a balancing act of chaos, evolving ideas, and fast-moving features — a four-and-a-half-month marathon of design survival.
Due to misunderstandings and constant debates on which concept was better, many different ideas were proposed. We had several directions at once. Gradually, one option began to accumulate all the best suggestions from stakeholders. It also addressed all the pain points we wanted to solve in the updated concept.
The main page had to be consistent with other parts of the app, despite the lack of ready-made patterns and a design system. We took many ideas, implemented them into our concept, studied how people consume information, conducted competitive analysis, and did dozens of studies. In the end, we got the version we loved — and not only we but also (in parentheses) the users.
Together with the product owner and product manager, we worked hard to prove that this was the best option, providing examples, analytics, and the jobs this concept addresses.
Here is an important quote, even I would say:
“Accept the experience of others as a source of product knowledge, but also defend your solutions as someone who understands user behavior patterns and competitor experience.”
1. Profit notifications are now inside Profit, not in another section like before.
2. A convenient Profit hub menu speeds up navigation in the social network. This was crucial since we couldn’t use a bottom nav bar, as we are only part of the main app. Yet, Profit has a complex structure and app architecture. You can open the Profit menu from anywhere, not just the main screen.
3. Introducing Stories. TikTok, then YouTube and Instagram revolutionized content consumption with short videos, just like YouTube did 10–15 years ago when it introduced video to the market. Our research confirms this behavioral change: more people prefer video content over written analysis, and short clips are favored over long ones. Plus, this saves users’ resources by giving only the most important info without deep dives. Many prefer watching Stories rather than endless feeds if they just want highlights. Stories also serve as a great tool for warming up users to new content from authors.
4. The “Currently Discussed” section solves user jobs by showing market happenings and their impact on discussions. Users get to see what’s going on and can engage with important events right away.
During user interviews, many people said the same thing: they just want the most important stuff. Quick, clear, and relevant. But not everyone agreed. Some stakeholders believed that users should spend a lot of time in the app — scrolling, exploring, and engaging like in a classic social media experience.
I saw it differently. In today’s world, time is the most valuable resource. People don’t want to endlessly scroll — they want to get the insights they came for and move on. Especially investors: they’re often goal-oriented, busy, and know exactly what they’re looking for.
That’s why my core design idea was this: “What if the product could do the hard work for the user — filter, sort, summarise — and deliver the value instantly?” If we succeed at that, users will come back again and again. Not because we’re addictive — but because we’re useful.
This idea became the foundation for the Topics section — the second tab on the main screen. Here, we show the most valuable content in each theme: the most liked post, the most discussed, and so on — all in one glance. If the user wants to explore more, they can dive deeper into a specific topic. If not, they can just scan the highlights across several themes and quickly get a sense of what’s happening.
It’s also great for users who don’t know what they’re looking for yet — instead of choosing where to start, we show them a curated set of themes right away. This reduces friction and helps users discover content effortlessly.
There’s also a topic catalog, the option to follow topics, and a personalised feed where your favourite topics appear first — making it even easier to focus on what matters.
Now that our “patient” is rehabilitated into the social network, it’s time to give them a “medicine” to fix the effect and add retention techniques. People love to brag about being the best predictors and comparing themselves to others. We provide a mechanism for users to compare themselves and get a chance to play the role of market psychic experts.
For each stock, users can vote whether it will rise or fall within a set horizon (N days). Based on the results, we generate rankings and gamify achievements, giving users a tool to show off their expertise and see what the crowd thinks about a particular stock at the moment.
We provide detailed analytics on predictions — this is something I refined. Although similar features existed before, they didn’t work well. I improved the UX, logic, UI, gamification, and rating system, and the feature exceeded all expectations.
This voting feature has become a unique artifact and a competitive advantage of the product, as well as a hub for attracting and retaining users.
Our social network is similar to a Marketplace, where posts or news act as products that users search for. Our goal is to make the content easy and fast to find, so we apply patterns and approaches from Marketplaces to improve the product experience.
Since our development team is small, we can’t release everything at once in one big iteration — that would take 2-3 years. Therefore, it is crucial to plan the rollout of features in an organized way, ensuring the interface remains consistent and that we can get user feedback quickly after each iteration to make timely improvements.
It is still too early to talk about the final results because our development resources are limited, and information is constantly updating. But here’s what we can say at the time of the release of the 4th out of 16 iterations. From September 2024 to June 2025, we saw dramatic growth in key metrics:
• 📈 Overall engagement (ER) increased from 4.6% to 7.1%
• 🔁 Retention rate grew from 21% to 34%
• 🧲 Sticky Factor jumped from 13.8% to 23%
• 👥 Active user base grew from 170k to 300k
Considering the current market downturn and that the main app is experiencing a decline in metrics during global market stability, our product shows positive trends, which is very encouraging.
• Worked in a team where the lines between designer and product manager blurred, allowing me to influence the product much deeper than just the interface.
• Faced some challenges, but they helped me grow professionally and realize the importance of protecting the user experience at every stage.
• Reconfirmed that design is truly my passion, and I enjoyed seeing the results of my work through positive feedback from real users.
I will be glad to any cooperation
What’s on
Skills
Problem Solving
Product Thinking
Full-Cycle UX
Prioritization
Team Collaboration
UI Execution
Data-Driven Design