Deliverables
Design System Concept to Production User Feedback Interviews User Experience Audits Appstore Screenshots Product Copywriting Graphics for Marketing Material Feature Presentation
Index
Role Experience Product Brand
Role Experience Product Brand
Role Experience Product Brand
What
rememe is a community platform dedicated to fast content creation with our unique canvas tools. The core experience is centered around remixing others' content to make it their own - continuing a chain.
Initially started as Collage - an app to viralize content through remix chains, rememe was born to expand on the capabilities of Collage. Our design system, Fruit Salad, consisted of a more fun and whimsical style with Comic Sans paired with punchy colors and tone of voice. rememe's new design system offers a more clean and modular presentation with SF Pro replacing Comic Sans. This change was decided to focus on the content itself than the template of the interface.
From its launch on April 2022, we went through multiple core feature shifts from groups (think Discord servers) to an app-wide chat to leaderboards to friends' face stickers on memes. Our team worked closely with existing users to see which growth experiment retained and which feature request was high in demand. The rememe in production today offers more of a freeform app experience.
Evolution of rememe from 🐥 to 𓅂
After 7 months of incubating, Collage officially launched on April 2022 and introduced many iterative features as prefaced. The rememe that was previously known was the vertical scroll - post per screen view. Through trial and error of these features, we ultimately came down to positioning rememe as the ultimate meme creation tool and have memes produced on the app be characteristically identifiable as created on rememe. It seems like memes are primarily created through a host of tools that are accessible yet too casual (i.e. Instagram/Snapchat/Screenshot editor mode iOS), or the inverse (i.e. PS Express/Piscart).
Quick tools - low effort high output
The key factor that makes people want to use rememe over other apps is the ability to rapidly create memes in various formats with low effort high output. Take for instance, deep-fried memes. It's a niche meme format that is widely distributed across subcultures of the internet but to create a deep fried meme requires using relatively advanced software or using some kind of clunky web tool at best. There is no way of rapidly getting the idea out into an image, except with rememe in 90% case.
Serendipity thesis
With the future release of recompostable posts (posts with , but for remixing). It's clear that there is a social pull to being to remix content, and this is primarily enabled in the tooling. Every post is fundamentally a template, every image can fundamentally be a post, however the main pull is still the editor itself.
One of the factors that pulls people into the app is simply serendipity. It's clear that more than 90% of people are going to be more so passive consumers than creators as the active pool of users starts to scale.
They're interested in seeing content that's entertaining (not necessarily funny but entertaining) and it's curiosity and a thirst for more content that will keep them scrolling. Additionally, one of the key interactions of rememe; the act of remixing, lowers the barrier of entry to enter the discussion, and even facilitates the possibility of discussion around meme-making.
This is where "pure chance" comes into play as through seeing meme from others, and engaging with them, people are given the opportunity to form new connections decoupled from real-world identity. This has a good deal of staying power as people then become invested in some form of return with relatively low investment, as long as they're being notified of the continuity. This however, in a world where highly established platforms Twitter, Tiktok, Discord, and iMessage exist, will remain a second class function until there is some form of critical mass or exclusivity on the platform.
Closing thoughts and what is next for rememe
Seasonal events or things that are positioned as a trend offer opportunities for virality - and is forecasted in marketing industries. Fashion for instance, has tight seasons to create an element of exclusivity and fear of missing out, tech companies release new features or formats for users to engage with (i.e. Instagram Stories + "Add your own" badges) to create an opportunity for shared context among users, and we've seen this behavior in the past when dropping cheeky and unconventional features like "sus mode" - where upon press and holding down on the screen, the whole phone vibrates, and "Collage Bird" - on April Fools day, the entire chat page turned into a Flappy Bird game with the Collage mascot. It actually led to conversations centered around those experiences which were designed to be, in some way, ephemeral (we kept the future around for only a little while). Meme drops, unhinged features, things that start discourse and create a space for shared context to extend the app into more than a tool, more than another feed, but an experience that can bring serendipity.
It is through the confluence of these four elements that we have the opportunity to build something that lasts. The editor is the bastion of our staying power, but everything else turns the app into an experience.