bloom social
Led the design for bloom’s core Discover feature, laying the foundation for the app to grow into a fully operational platform and impact over one million lives.
Role
Project Manager,
Lead Product Designer
Team
1 Project Manager,
1 Design Manager,
5 Designers
Timeline
May - August 2025
(3 months)
Skills
Design System,
UX Research,
Interaction Design,
Visual Design,
Prototyping
Tools
Figma,
Figjam,
Notion
CONTEXT
nenos redefines social media
nenos Inc. is one of the world’s few 501(c)(3) social media organizations. Its mission is to amplify local voices and foster meaningful connections, offering a positive, community-first alternative to traditional social media platforms. nenos carries out this mission through its platform, Bloom Social, which allows users to share authentic content and discover nearby events, communities, and causes.
What’s missing from Bloom Social?
Bloom Social’s mission is to foster community, but its current app lacks a feature to help users connect with one another. Without a way to easily discover local events, causes, and groups, the app makes it difficult to turn online interactions into real-world connections.
User research
How might we help people engage with their communities in a more authentic way?
To explore users’ social preferences, discovery habits, and social motivation when searching for local events, businesses, and communities to engage with, we created a survey with 100+ responses from people who regularly use social media platforms, followed by 9 user interviews.
I interviewed people who regularly use social media and people who do not to learn what tools they currently use for social discovery, and what they feel is missing from those tools that could help them get more involved within their communities.
4 main insights
🗣️
Other people’s opinions matter, a lot.
“If I don’t know anyone who went, it’s harder to trust that the place will be enjoyable.”
🕙
People prioritize convenience
“If it’s too far, I have to commute longer which makes the event less feasible to attend.”
🤩
People want to see content they’re interested in
“I want most of the events to be geared towards my interests because that will help me decide whether or not I want to go.”
🤔
People need the right information to decide
“It’s hard to find out about things if they don’t have a social media/website/instagram to know what it’s about.”
Meet Maya & James
To better understand and design for our audience, we used insights from the surveys, semi-structured interviews, and affinity mapping to create two user personas. Guided by the Bloom Social team and grounded in the data collected, we decided to focus on Gen Z and Millennials as our primary target users. These personas highlight their goals, motivations, and challenges, serving as a reference point for design decisions throughout the project.
Independent
Passive
Safe
Team player
Active
Risky
Messy
Organized
Busy
Time rich
Analytical
Creative
Introvert
Extrovert
Personality
Maya C.
21
Junior College Student / Part-time Barista
Small College Town
Avid Social Media Consumer
Maya is a college junior who loves discovering new experiences but is cautious about her choices. She's socially active and maintains a presence on multiple social platforms, but she's also budget-conscious and time-limited. She works part-time at a local coffee shop, which has made her more interested of small businesses and authentic local spots.
Social Life: Has a core friend group but is always looking to expand her network. Enjoys both planned outings and spontaneous adventures, but prefers to have some research done.
Interests: Art events, food festivals, live music, pop-up markets, unique dining experiences, community events
Bio
Social Explorer
Independent
Passive
Safe
Team player
Active
Risky
Messy
Organized
Busy
Time rich
Analytical
Creative
Introvert
Extrovert
Personality
James T.
Local Adventurer
38
Recently Unemployed / Former Regional
Manager & Business Analyst
Suburban Baltimore, MD
Regular Community Event Attendee
James is a lifelong Northeasterner who enjoys staying plugged into his local scene, even while navigating a career transition. A former regional manager in the mass transit industry, he now has more time to explore local happenings — from brewery trivia nights to 5Ks and music events. While he doesn’t typically organize events himself, he’s no stranger to community involvement, having volunteered at fundraisers in the past.
James often attends events with his girlfriend and a close-knit group of friends. He enjoys planning ahead but stays open to spontaneous plans if something promising pops up.
Local breweries, trivia nights, live concerts, running events, pop-up community fundraisers, Reddit threads about upcoming shows.
Bio
Social Life:
Interests:
Competitive analysis
We analyzed four platforms—Nextdoor, Mastodon, Instagram, and S’more—to understand the current digital landscape for local discovery and social engagement. While each had their own strengths, they lacked strong support for interest-based, local discovery. This revealed an opportunity for Bloom Social to stand out with personalized, community-driven recommendations, which are built on ethical design practices.
What’s the problem?
Gen Z and millennials enjoy discovering new places and events around them and often turn to social media and search engines for inspiration. However, they struggle to find reliable, relevant, and personalized information when deciding where to go.
Existing platforms often prioritize trending content over local recommendations and fail to reflect trusted opinions from peers. As a result, users struggle to make decisions, relying on convenience over connection, reducing opportunities to engage with their community.
Our Solution?
Local events are the key to helping small businesses build community and encouraging individuals to find authentic connections. To fill the gaps left by other platforms, we designed a Discover tab with dedicated Event pages, giving hosts and attendees all the information they need in one place while staying true to Bloom Social’s mission of fostering genuine connections.
Let the creating begin
To ensure seamless integration across the app, we focused on designing seven critical screens and flows: the Discovery Homepage, Search and Filter, Event Creation, Event Page, Now & Post Creation, User Profile & Analytics, and Broadcast.
I took ownership of the home page, designing the UI for the screen that users see when they click on the Discover tab.
initial home page explorations
As a frequent social media user, I’m familiar with common social media design patterns, but I had to carefully balance information density and hierarchy to avoid overwhelming users while still providing the exact details they needed.
First
now
discover
create
updates
profile
Search
happening now
trending
Recommended for you
username
this is a really cool event :)
256
8
username
this is a really cool event :)
256
8
username
this is a really cool event :)
256
8
username
this is a really cool event :)
256
8
9:41
Intuitive; follows the design of traditional social media pages.
Design is too conventional and doesn’t highlight feature well.
second
username
this is a really cool event :)
4.6 ⭐
$$$
0.4 mi
username
this is a really cool event :)
4.6
$$$
0.4 mi
this is a really cool event :)
username
4.6
0.4 mi
$$$
this is a really cool event :)
username
256
now
discover
create
updates
profile
9:41
All
Cooking 🍳
Cafes ☕
Baking 🍰
Photography 📷
Has additional helpful information like cost & distance.
The amount of Information is a bit overwhelming.
Cards are confusing; Are they event cards or posts from users?
Third
now
discover
create
updates
profile
9:41
All
Cooking
Cafes
Baking
Photography
Travel
Recommended
See All
Museum
Chelsea, NYC
4.6
$$$
Museum
Chelsea, NYC
4.6
$$$
Museum
Chelsea, NYC
4.6
$$$
Happening Now
See All
Museum
Chelsea, NYC
4.6
$$$
Museum
Chelsea, NYC
4.6
$$$
Museum
Chelsea, NYC
4.6
$$$
Trending
See All
Museum
Chelsea, NYC
4.6
$$$
Museum
Chelsea, NYC
4.6
$$$
Museum
Chelsea, NYC
4.6
$$$
The different categories help users narrow down information.
Impersonal and doesn’t promote community aspect.
Large number of event cards is overwhelming.
fourth
now
discover
create
updates
profile
9:41
Rating
Distance
Cost
Happening now
username
123 Main Street, City, ST 12345
this is a really cool event :)
256
8
username
this is a really cool event :)
256
8
3.3 mi
this is a really cool event :)
username
256
8
this is a really cool event :)
123 Main Street, City, ST 12345
username
256
8
Layout really emphasizes community and discover aspect.
The offset from the cards makes it more visually interesting.
Having an address is not an effective use of space.
I ended up choosing the fourth version because I liked the visual offset of the cards and felt that the keeping the traditional social media format would be most familiar to users and encourage more community building since users can interact with other posts on the app.
User Testing Round 1
We gathered 24 participants from usertesting.com, a powerful user testing platform, for our first usability test to evaluate the flow and intuitiveness of our mid-fidelity designs.
Home page insights & learnings
Insight: Most people see the discover page as a place to find local events and tailor the page to their needs (filter, search).
Actions: Make the title of the event more specific and highlight the top 3 most important information: time, cost, and distance.
iteration
User testing led me to make significant changes that improved both the usability and visual design of the home page, creating a clearer and more engaging experience.
Before
now
discover
create
updates
profile
9:41
Rating
Distance
Cost
Happening now
More Filters
username
123 Main Street, City, ST 12345
this is a really cool event :)
256
8
username
this is a really cool event :)
256
8
3.3 mi
this is a really cool event :)
username
256
8
this is a really cool event :)
123 Main Street, City, ST 12345
username
256
8
Information lacks clear visual hierarchy.
Event information is unclear.
After
9:41
Discover
Search for events and places
Filter
Date
Location
Interests
Price
Recommended by
lily.012
1d ago
New York Concert on August 2nd 🎵
256
8
2.0 mi
$10-50
marcus11
7d ago
Brooklyn’s Annual Big Food Festival 🍕
142
12
2.4 mi
Free
Followers only
i_author
JUL 8
Cafe Book Sign
129
10
4.2 mi
Free
Friends only
sun.ny
JUN 30
Squid Game S3 watch party at my house ‼️
5
3
3.3 mi
$50-100
now
discover
create
updates
profile
Layout emphasizes community with likes and comments.
Added audience tags for added flexibility
Highlighted important info from user researched like cost and distance.
Made event details more descriptive.
User Testing Round 2
After iterating on our mid-fidelity designs, we ran a 45-step usability test with 3 participants to evaluate our high-fidelity prototype. While most features felt intuitive, subtle improvements like clearer affordances for event announcements and more explicit search tag labels will help enhance overall usability. Since feedback on the home page remained positive, no changes were needed.
results
What was our impact on Bloom Social?
We achieved nenos Inc.’s goal of designing the Discover tab and its integrated event creation system for Bloom Social. Drawing insights from 105 survey responses and 9 in-depth interviews, we discovered significant gaps in today’s social media landscape around authenticity and community building.
Through two rounds of usability testing, first with our mid-fidelity prototype and then with our high-fidelity prototype, we saw:
+13.5%
Increase in task completion
-24%
Reduction in task difficulty
+39%
Faster event creation
Projected impact
At the end of the project, we delivered developer-ready designs and a streamlined design system. Our designs are projected to increase user retention, foster strong offline connections, and establish Bloom Social as the first nonprofit social platform centering local events.
Our work is expected to impact over 1 million people, from small businesses to large community organizations. We presented our process and outcomes at the 2025 Develop for Good Demo Day to hundreds of attendees. With our work, Bloom Social now includes the essential features needed to grow into a fully operational platform. For the first time, users can engage with events, communities, and local opportunities in a meaningful way.
Our Finished Prototype
Creating Events
Viewing Events
Searching Events
our streamlined design system
if we had more time
We successfully created the Discover tab and streamlined the design system for Bloom Social. However, if given more time, we would have loved to explore:
🗣️
Larger Usability Testing Sample
Expanding beyond 3 participants in our 2nd round of usability testing to validate design decisions with greater confidence
🕙
Enhanced Personalization
Explore deeper in interest-based recommendations to deliver more relevant content and insights to users.
🤩
Design System Integration
Extend the updated design system across the app for consistent visuals and functionality.
My takeaways
This was my first time leading a team of designers, and it turned out to be such a rewarding experience. I got to work closely with stakeholders, balancing client goals with user needs. I also learned how to streamline and build from a design system for the very first time. Designing for the social media space was especially fun since I use these platforms a lot myself, so it was exciting to get creative within a product space I’m familiar with. I grew more comfortable navigating ambiguity since the client’s scope was quite broad at first Overall, this project was both fun and eye-opening, and it gave me the chance to grow as a leader while exploring a product space I’d love to dive deeper into :)
Testimonial From Our Client
“Develop for Good has been an incredible partner and collaborator for our small nonprofit. Their work has given us an exponential boost in our timeline for providing a new nonprofit initiative. It was awesome working with such a hard-working, creative, and organized team of students over a smooth and thoughtful process, and we have been super impressed with their deliverables.”
Matthew Calabresky, CEO, nenos Inc.