Mushroom
🍄 Play, Chat, Create! 🍄
Mushroom aimed to create a boundless digital space where individuals and communities flourish through genuine connections. My role as the Product Design Lead was to reshape Mushroom's app experience, ensuring AI entities became an integral part of user interactions, enhancing both engagement and the value of digital personas. Through a combination of intuitive tools and pioneering AI innovations, we crafted a unified experience that brought together diverse digital landscapes into a harmonious ecosystem.
Year
2022-2023
Role
Product design
Sector
NLP Voice AI
Key Accomplishments
Reimagined Mushroom's app UX, harnessing cutting-edge product design, doubling engagement metrics, and asserting our forefront in sculpting AI-driven user journeys.
In the realm of Large Language Models (LLM), we're redefining product design frontiers. Our strategies seamlessly meld LLM intricacies, pioneering user-centric AI breakthrough.
Spearheaded the inception of Mycelia Design System, fostering a unified and seamless user experience.
Employed resilient UX research methodologies, harnessing insights for influential design outcomes, propelling business expansion and refining user experience at Mushroom.
Growing Mushroom 🧑🌾🍄
“Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom.” - Thomas Carlyl
The challenge:
Our primary challenge was to integrate AI entities seamlessly within the expansive LLM board and social matrix of Mushroom’s platform. We needed to design an experience that amplified users’ digital identities while nurturing authentic connections in the digital realm. This included creating intuitive AI-human interactions that did not feel artificial but instead enriched the overall experience.
The approach:
- 01. Understand 🧠
To create authentic AI-driven user interactions, we focused on identifying key moments in which AI could enhance engagement naturally. This meant understanding where and how AI could add the most value without overwhelming or distracting users, ensuring each touchpoint felt intentional and meaningful. - 02. Examine 🔍
We analyzed industry insights and user behavior to inform our approach to AI-human interactions. Our aim was to create an AI experience that felt natural and engaging, taking cues from successful implementations while innovating based on the unique needs of our digital community. - 03. Ideate 🔮
We gathered experts across design, technology, and social interaction to brainstorm how AI avatars could seamlessly integrate into social environments. Our brainstorming sessions focused on ensuring that interactions felt organic, enhancing virtual gatherings in a way that contributed positively to user experiences.
The solution:
Identify💡
- We initiated a comprehensive discovery phase to fully understand user needs and project nuances. Through collaborative workshops and user research, we developed a strategic roadmap for integrating AI into our digital ecosystem. This phase revealed the essential elements required to create seamless AI-human interactions.
Define ✍️
- We established clear success metrics to guide our design process, including the "Natural Interaction Index" (NII), aiming for an initial score of 85+. This index allowed us to track the intuitiveness and user satisfaction of interactions with AI. Additionally, we set goals to increase user engagement, which was measured by extended interaction times and stronger connections with AI entities.
Build 🧱
- Our focus during the build phase was on creating an intuitive onboarding process for AI features. We designed the app to gradually introduce users to AI entities, ensuring that the integration felt natural and reduced potential friction. The user interface was developed to promote comfort, helping users understand and trust AI as a part of their digital journey.
Test & Iterate
- 01. Diverse Feedback Gathering 💬
We actively engaged a wide range of stakeholders and user demographics in testing sessions. These sessions simulated real social environments to ensure that the AI integration worked effectively for different types of users, and to identify areas needing refinement. - 02. Refining Interaction Dynamics 💎
User feedback revealed that AI avatars were occasionally too verbose, which hindered engagement. We used this insight to refine AI responses, making them more concise and aligned with user preferences, thereby enhancing the natural flow of conversations. - 03. Iterative Enhancements 👨🔬
Through an iterative approach, we continually refined AI-human interactions. Each iteration focused on reducing friction and enhancing user comfort, ultimately leading to a polished experience that seamlessly integrated AI into the platform and significantly improved user engagement metrics.
Launch 🚀
The launch of Mushroom’s reimagined app experience was a collaborative effort that brought together stakeholders, AI experts, and user insights. This alignment allowed us to navigate the complexities of human-AI dynamics, ensuring a successful rollout that transformed the digital social experience. As a result, user engagement doubled, and our integration of AI created a unique digital persona experience that was well-received by our community.
Continue to iterate 💡
- Post-launch, we committed to an ongoing cycle of iteration and improvement, closely incorporating user feedback. This dynamic process ensures that Mushroom continues to evolve, reflecting the needs of our growing user base and maintaining its status as a leading platform in AI-driven digital interaction.
Key Results
- Doubled User Engagement: The redesigned UX and AI integration led to a 2x increase in user engagement, showing the effectiveness of natural AI interactions.
- Enhanced Interaction Quality: The introduction of the "Natural Interaction Index" (NII) helped us track improvements, achieving a score of 85+ in user satisfaction.
- Unified Experience with Mycelia Design System: The inception of the Mycelia Design System provided a cohesive and seamless user experience, further strengthening user trust and comfort.