Product Design Challenge #3: Threads
Solving key customer problems in the Threads app to improve retention
👋 Welcome to the Product Design Challenge: Every month, you’ll receive a realistic product design challenge to work on your skills, including product thinking, UX design, research, and prototyping. You can use it purely for practice purposes or even as a portfolio case study. If you don’t want to receive the monthly challenge, you can manage your preferences in your account settings.
Scenario
You are working for Threads (Meta) as part of the consumer app team. Your team comprises a product manager, two full-stack engineers, a back-end engineer, and a user researcher.
Intro
The Threads commercial team has noticed that many users churn after Weeks 1 and 4, as the content they discover in the app is “less relevant than on X”.
Through a recent testing cycle, your user researcher has come back with the following key issues, as reported by your users:
A lot of the content on the home feed is irrelevant.
There is no way for users to see the most recent posts in their home tab.
There is no way for users to filter content by people they follow.
The hashtag functionality is hard to understand/use.
Goal
Come up with a few ideas on updating the app home screen in order to:
Increase average time spent on the Theads app.
Increase app retention after Week 1 and Week 4.
You can suggest new features, update the layout, or suggest a change in the algorithm (if you are up for it). All are potentially viable ideas that will be evaluated by your product manager, tech lead, and commercial team.
Deliverable
Optionally, interview 1-2 people about using the Threads app, to further capture insight on the stated problems.
Come up with 1-3 ideas on how to solve the most notable issues from above.
Optionally, sketch out some of these ideas on paper.
Mock up at least one of these ideas in Figma. If you are practicing your UI skills, recreate the app from scratch. Otherwise, try following a file from the Figma community.
Optionally, create a working prototype and test it with the users you interviewed.
Sharing your work
This is an internal exercise, but sharing your work is recommended. You can share your process and output in the comment section (by adding a note) if you’d like to openly get feedback from the Designary community or simply share it internally with your team and peers.
Recommended tools
Pen & Paper for sketching and ideation
Figjam or Miro for noting down your thinking & problem definition
Figma for mockups and prototypes
This challenge will help you with
Product thinking
UI Design
UX Design
Prototyping
Disclaimer
This challenge's scenario, data, and content are purely conceptual and for educational purposes. There is no affiliation with the companies portrayed.