aepistle
A new kind of social media
Overview
Designed to cultivate a new social media climate aepistle is catered to writers and truth seekers invested in facilitating authentic interactions, and fostering social unity on the web. With social unity as their north star, aepistle is focused on creating a platform for communities who have felt silenced or marginalized by their race, gender, social status, religion, or sexual orientation.
aepistle achieves social unity by offering an unrestricted social media experience, adding an anonymous profile dynamic while fusing familiar social media elements and implementing them in one place.
My Role
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UI Designer
I designed screens for aepistle's reshare feature, creating and assembling components for users to reshare articles, logged in under an established profile, or anonymously.
I created 5 desktop visuals, designed to intrigue new users looking for a different way to social media.
My idea behind this was to show icon clues about what could be done in aepistle yet leave mystery into the equation.
aepistle coming soon desktop proposal
The Challenge
How might we ..... create and implement a way for users to reshare article posts to a community group anonymously through a user-friendly interface?
Reshare design components include adding additional images, video, text, audio, or the capability to add links creating a new personalized aepistle experience.
Creating anonymity allows users who have felt silenced or marginalized by their race, gender, social status, religion, or sexual orientation to freely express themselves without fear or judgment.
I constructed a 25 screen flow breaking down the three main reshare flows:
• Reshare > Internally as an Anonymous profile user
• Reshare > Internally signed into a personal account
• Reshare >To an external platform like Instagram
Home Feed > share post internally
Reshare post > groups
Post as Anonymous
Pick A group
Group Selected > Femme Future
Group Selected > Femme Future
Preview > Post
The Hypothesis
Keep anonymous screens color-coded - the purple and peach colors are seen down below to help users distinguish between account actions. The purple tone signifies the mystery, which anonymous sharing provides. Peach hues were used to keep consistency within aepistle's branding. Each color will help users visually recognize where they are within the app. A preview of a profile image associated with the account also helps indicate which profile you are resharing.
Anonymous Post
Two distinguishing factors
1. Purple Header
2. Anonymous Image Indicator
Account Profile Post
Reshare Audio
Adding Reshare Elements
aepistle allows you to add Images, Video, Text, Audio, and Links to shared posts,
below you can see the flow of adding an audio file
Reshare feature is triggered > select media > Add text title & description > Add cover image> select image from gallery > cover image added > Preview Post with added audio > Confirmation reshare is successful
Reshare Audio
Select Audio / Media
(adding in Image )
Add Image from Gallery
Cover Image Added
Audio Added
Add Text Description + Cover Image
Preview Post - Audio Added
Reshare + Audio Posted
Additional UI Elements
Here are a few on-brand concepts I created with aepistle's theme of writing which could be incorporated into the design.
Allow users to bookmark and save article posts.
Article Card
A slide / drag trigger to activate the reshare with comment feature. This interaction could mimic turning a digital book page. See below.
Outcomes & Lessons
Working on this project I had an opportunity to focus strictly on UI design components and flow. My main challenge was creating an experience blending familiar media components alongside a new anonymous profile concept. I achieved this goal through color-coordination and profile imagery.
Because formal research was not performed per client request and timeline the UI structure was not based on data-driven design. I feel that the UI design rationale could be improved with supporting data and user testing, increasing app usability, functionality. Unfortunately, this project was outsourced soon after I joined the team. With more time I would gather insights to direct design decisions.
The next steps would have included user testing followed by iterations based on feedback from testing.