2022
Aaqua App
Social media · Live-stream
End-to-end design of a live-streaming product, from research and problem definition to production delivery.
Context
A community-led social platform adding live-streaming for creators and their audiences.
What I did
- Ran user research to understand creator and audience needs and frame the problem with the product team.
- Conducted competitive analysis to map existing live-streaming patterns and find whitespace.
- Defined the concept design for the end-to-end live-streaming experience.
- Produced low- to mid-fidelity wireframes to explore and validate flows quickly.
- Crafted the UI and interaction design across the creator and viewer journeys.
- Built interactive prototypes to communicate the experience and gather feedback.
- Engaged stakeholders throughout to align design direction with business and technical goals.
What matters
A refreshingly new social experience powering your passions.
Aaqua is a community-led social platform where people, creators and brands unite through music, the arts, games, interests and community. The brief: add live-streaming in a way that felt native to the community — not bolted on.
“How might we design live-streaming that serves both streamers and their audience, and feels true to what makes Aaqua different?”
The platform
Built around passions, not feeds.
Unlike follower-driven networks, Aaqua organises around shared interests. That shaped every design decision — live-streaming had to strengthen communities around passions, giving creators a stage and audiences a way to take part.
COMMUNITY EXPERIENCE
Being a part of the community
"What's New" is where all the content from the community can be found. Members are free to create posts, ask questions, comment, and interact with each other on live streams and live chats.
Getting to know the community
We also believe that with its collective group of members, each community is unique and has its own "personality". The "About Us" section introduces the members and gives you some interesting facts about them. We hope that by doing so, people are more likely to find commonality and connect with each other.
The process
From brief to delivery.
The work moved from competitive analysis and user research with streamers and audiences, through MVP scoping with engineering and strategy, to user flows, concept design, stakeholder validation and delivery.
The Process Timeline
Competitive analysis
Looking at the key players in the market. Finding out the unique feature of each platform and identifying the gaps and areas of opportunity.
User research — Streamer & audience
Card sorting with live streamers and audience to determine the most valuable features to them and their needs and pain points.
Feature scoping for MVP
Presenting research findings and aligning MVP goals with engineering and strategy team.
User flow & concept design
Defining the end-to-end user journey for both streamers and audience. Completing UI and interaction design.
Approval and validation
Presenting feature concepts to stakeholders. Usability testing and validation.
Research
Learning from streamers and their audiences.
Competitive analysis across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, BIGO Live and others mapped each platform's unique features and revealed gaps and opportunities. Card sorting with live streamers and audience members then separated the must-haves — commenting, full-screen viewing, replying to comments — from the features people could live without.
Customizable reactions
Making engagement unique to each community.
The challenge
"Sometimes there are a lot of people viewing my stream, but nobody is leaving any messages to interact with me"
The end-to-end journey covers both sides of the stream: creators going live and growing their community, and audiences discovering, watching and taking part. MVP features include comments, live polls, Ask A Question, and media sharing.
To make engagement more unique to each community, we introduced customizable reactions.
Micro-interaction explorations
Exploring the little moments that make live feel alive.
From join notifications to reaction clusters, each micro-interaction was explored and iterated on to find the right balance of energy and restraint — lively enough to feel communal, subtle enough to never distract from the stream itself.
Ask Me Anything
Letting the audience steer the conversation.
The number of messages a host receives during a stream can be overwhelming. Aaqua AMA allows the audience to ask questions and upvote them so that the streaming host can pick the most popular questions to answer.
Live chats
Starting conversations around shared passions.
The challenge
"I do hope to make friends on this app, but I am too shy to start a livestream. I don't want to appear on camera"
With live chat, members can start a conversation with each other about their passion and interest. Users can add passion tags that they would like to follow. Members who have the same passion tags will receive a notification to join the conversation.
Community profiles surface live conversations members can join with a single tap, lowering the barrier to taking part.
The Now Live discovery feed groups active chats by passion tag, so members find conversations that match what they care about.
Members can also create their own chat about topics they are passionate about and invite others who shares the same interest to join the conversation.
