Shades

Team

Individual Design Challenge

Role

Product Designer

Timeframe

September 2024

Shades is a news and culture app designed for Gen Z, delivering bite-sized summaries of trending stories across multiple perspectives. From politics to pop culture, Shades cuts through algorithm-driven bias and clickbait to help users see the full picture with a personalized feed, interactive polls, and no paywalls.

Problem #01

Comment Section Lacks Context

Shades' comment section lacks interactive features like upvotes, downvotes, and reactions, making it difficult for users to gauge sentiment or surface meaningful opinions. This turns what should be a dynamic discussion into a passive experience, undermining Shades' core mission of showcasing diverse perspectives.

Problem #02

Profiles Lack Credibility

User profiles lack context with no stated stance or credibility indicators leaving comments without meaning or weight. The result is a disorganized collection of opinions that makes it difficult to assess the validity or perspective behind each take.

Solution

Redesigning the Comment Section

The existing comment section offered no way to sort or contextualize opinions. I introduced a color-coded tag system to categorize sentiment and a badge feature that rewards regular contributors with credibility transforming comments from noise into meaningful, contextualized discussion.