Earshot - Anonymous Social Media Mobile App
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
Earshot is a start-up social media mobile app designed for a target demographic of primarily 18-30 year old men and women. Earshot's objective is to provide an anonymity focused social media experience with added locality features for people to stay informed with their local communities and join sub-communities globally.
We worked with Earshot to bring the idea from initial concept to fully fledged product and brand through designing from beginning to end following a user-centered design philosophy. Deliverables included mobile app UI/UX design for Earshot, a website and visual identity.
Overview
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed facilisis erat massa, quis consectetur quam rhoncus at. Phasellus non tempus augue. Vestibulum pellentesque velit vestibulum arcu faucibus, ac rhoncus leo lobortis. Proin vulputate lorem orci, sit amet pellentesque ante convallis eget. Fusce faucibus sed nunc eget luctus. Sed magna tellus, pulvinar ultricies leo sed, lacinia commodo mauris. Phasellus ornare, odio vitae blandit rutrum, urna eros blandit justo, quis porta tellus nulla condimentum nisi. Donec accumsan leo mi, vel viverra nisi.
Overview
The Earshot team's goal was fostering meaningful conversations and connections while ensuring user privacy and to provide users with a platform for anonymous discussions and community interactions. The project encompassed creating an engaging and intuitive user experience while establishing a unique brand identity and aesthetic visual design.
We worked closely with Earshot's founder team and developers through Slack, Zoom and Notion and with regular presentation calls. Our goal was to create a product that was truly in a league of its own and a visual identity to serve as the backbone of Earshot's brand experience.
Problem
Social media apps are now numerous however many people state dissatisfaction at the external validation seeking nature of the user experience of most existing social media apps. Most people tend to display a 'highlight' version of themselves on social media.
Many existing social media apps tend to be focused on the goal of achieving likes and followers instead of providing a platform to allow people who share similar interests to come together and share knowledge and experiences with each other.
The average social media user tends to not share their true thoughts due to concerns and social pressure about being perceived negatively as a result of their social media posts. The flip side to this is when the identity of social media users is removed, for example now defunct app Yik Yak - this can lead to the negative use of social media apps such as cyber bullying.
Process
Our design process included research, analysis, ideation, wire-framing, high-fidelity design and prototyping in addition to rounds of usability testing, gaining feedback with actionable insights and then iterating. We ensured to maintain data-driven design decision and to clearly identity user pain points, both within existing apps and when testing the Earshot high fidelity prototype.
The research phase was intensive, including conducting benchmarks and market audits and researching heavily within technology to look at what ways we could solve problems faced by the users of previous apps in the space. We clearly identified Earshots key potential user groups and pin pointed their needs, behaviours, pain points, and goals.
Solution
After the research and analysis phases were completed, to tackle the issues mentioned, we decided for the solution to be a focus on anonymity, with strong measures in place such as constant moderation through both human moderators and AI deep learning.
Training the moderation software through the AI technique of deep learning would involve feeding the software with large quantities of shouts which had been successfully moderated via Earshot human moderators. This allows the AI to learn which shouts are acceptable and which aren't which leads to unacceptable shouts being deleted and shouts the AI is unsure on being sent to the human moderation team.
The product also includes the ability to join communities (called spaces) each involving a interest or hobby to then be able to view user generated posts (shouts) from those communities on the user's shout feed. The user then has multiple options to interact with the shout including saving, liking, disliking, commenting and reporting. For users who wish to stay updated with their local community, a location filtering feature is built into the app's shout feed dropdown menu, allowing users to choose a country/city with distance radius they wanted to restrict visible shouts to.
Result
The project resulted in a visionary new mobile app design and prototype for Earshot's team to bring into development alongside a truly unique and stunning visual identity and brand. The website we designed and developed for Earshot significantly aided their team in their marketing efforts and in regards to their goal of creating a significant email waiting list of users ready to be notified when the app is launched.
The project addressed initial usability challenges, elevated the brand's identity, and enhanced user experiences, resulting in increased engagement and a stronger foothold in the social media arena with a mobile app design ready to take the world by storm.
