Social Feed: Mobile Product Design · Interaction Strategy · Schoox
Making It Easy for
Teams to Connect
and Reply Instantly
Completely redesigned the mobile feed layout to destroy the friction of typing
out long responses on a phone. By making interactions fast, light, and visual, we
closed the communication gaps between dispersed teams and built an
experience that people actually want to engage with during a hectic workday.
Role
Product Designer (Mobile)
Focus
Mobile Redesign, Social
Interaction Flow Optimization, Design System Compliance
Collaborators
CEO, Engineers, Product
Designer (Web), UX Researcher, Design Systems
Year
2024
SOCIAL FEED
Social Feed; built for Schoox's enterprise LMS platform. 50K+ learners.
Overview
Adapting a new engagement
system for a mobile screen.
The goal was to take a stale, fragmented
discussion board and turn it into a lively
community space people actually want to use.
I led the UX and UI redesign of the Social Feed experience for our mobile
Learning Management System (LMS) app. While another designer handled the
web version of the feed, my job was to adapt those new engagement features
specifically for a mobile screen.
By restructuring the mobile layout, I made it incredibly simple for team members
to post, reply, and react straight from their phones, using UX Cam data to find
and eliminate hidden mobile friction points.
A natural mobile
social experience
Translate core social
habits - posting,
replying, reacting - into smooth mobile
gestures without
distracting from the
app's main learning
areas.
Cohesive across
web and mobile
Partner closely with
the web designer and
design systems team
so the feed feels
seamless whether a
user is on a phone or
a desktop.
Track behavior,
cut friction
Use real-world usage
data from UX Cam to
prove that simplifying
mobile interaction
layouts directly
increases day-to-day
team participation.
TL;DR
Problem:
the mobile feed was a copy-
pasted desktop layout; nested
threads, flat reactions, no on-the-go
admin tools.
Approach:
UX Cam session data drove
three mobile-first pillars; contextual
discovery, frictionless interaction,
validation loops.
My role:
owned the mobile adaptation
solo, in lockstep with the web designer
and design systems team.
Outcome: engagement and reply friction
both moved - see Impact below.
The Challenge
A lazy copy-paste of desktop was
choking off team communication.
Nested threads, flat reactions, and no on-the-go
admin tools; mobile was treated as an afterthought.
The original mobile social feed was treated as an afterthought; it was essentially
just a lazy copy-paste of the desktop website that completely ignored how
people actually use a phone. Users found themselves trapped in messy, deeply
nested comment threads, while the bland, colorless reaction icons offered zero
satisfying feedback or social proof. To make matters worse, busy managers on
the move couldn't even pin or schedule critical announcements from their
phones.
Business Need
Boost user retention and daily activity across both web and mobile by building a seamless, unified engagement system that keeps teams connected no matter what device they use.
User Need
Team members need a clean, effortless mobile feed where they can celebrate wins, ask for help, and catch up with coworkers instantly without jumping through administrative hoops.
Discovery Phase
UX Cam pointed to three mobile-
first engagement pillars.
Instead of guessing where community features should live, I watched exactly
how students were already trying to talk to each other inside the app.
To make sure adding a social feed wouldn't ruin or distract from the main study
experience, I audited the mobile app's layout to find the most natural spaces to
introduce community features.
Contextual Discovery
We started surfacing student insights and trending discussions that matched the exact course a user was looking at right then; keeping content relevant
and preventing "feed fatigue."
Frictionless Interaction
We threw out the heavy, clunky
comment boxes copied over from web. In their place: modular, thumb-friendly
tools that let users react or reply with a single tap.
Validation Loops
We introduced high-contrast social proof - bright reactions and custom badges - to give users instant recognition. UX Cam data proved this
emotional validation was completely missing.
SOCIAL FEED - NEW POST
Problem To Solve
Students and teams using the mobile app completely tuned out group discussions,
treating them as chaotic background noise. Because basic social features like threading,
pinning, and reacting were badly adapted for a mobile screen, engagement plummeted
compared to the desktop website.
Research · Gathering Insights
Clunky mobile design, not
disengagement, was the real problem.
Industry research blamed isolation for course drop-off;
our own UX Cam data pointed somewhere more specific.
While general industry research showed that feeling isolated makes students
drop out of online courses, our actual UX Cam data pointed to a much more
specific problem: clunky mobile design was blocking people from interacting. We
analyzed competitors like 360Learning and realized that mobile users constantly
switch contexts, making "contextual conversations" absolutely vital.
Competitive teardown — 360Learning
Satisfying Social Proof
A standard, boring web-style "Like" button just didn't cut it on a phone. Users needed highly visual, high-contrast reactions for an instant hit of peer validation.
Thread Management
Session recordings showed mobile users giving up and closing the app after endless scrolling through flat, disorganized comment walls.
Management On-the-Move
Team managers were handcuffed; no
pinning, scheduling, or approving from mobile. Full admin tools needed to live in their pockets.
How Might We
…use natural, thumb-friendly mobile layouts to make
group chat feel rewarding and effortless for scattered
teams, without distracting from their main study goals?
User Testing · Testing the Solution
Three flaws surfaced; and got
re-engineered immediately.
We measured one thing: how quickly a user could
spot a discussion that mattered and jump into it.
Expandable Replies
Insight
Copying deep, indented desktop comment threads onto a phone
broke the layout, making text squished and unreadable.
Action
Long threads hide by default, keeping the main feed clean; users
dive into the full conversation with a
single tap.
Satisfying Reactions
Insight
Mobile users wanted tactile feedback; they wanted to feel a reaction happen, not just watch a counter tick up.
Action
High-contrast color gradients and tuned touch animations made
every tap feel responsive and
satisfying.
Status Blindness
Insight
Managers were lost tracking which posts were drafts, pending review, or suggested by team members.
Action
Color-coded status tags now flag post status instantly, so managers can review and approve on the fly.
Impact · CLIENT FEEDBACK
Customers called the new feed clean, intuitive, and finally worth using.
After interviewing both Schoox and non-Schoox clients, the redesigned feed landed with enthusiastic feedback; customers described the new direction as far cleaner, with wayfinding that felt significantly more intuitive.
"I think it is really clear and clean, no extra details and noise, feels intuitive. It is very user-friendly."
— Customer interview with Bec
"Pretty cool design. It feels like it's geared towards professional learning vs academic. I think it can be a cool system…"
— Customer interview with Kaitlin
Beyond the direct feedback, the redesign enhanced collaboration by giving teams a single, centralized platform for discussion and sharing. Through these UX improvements, both administrators and learners gained real control over content; posting, scheduling, reacting, and pinning important updates without friction.
What I Learned From This Project
Three principles I carried out of Social Feed.
Data over theory
While generic academic theories about "social learning" sound great on paper, they
don't mean anything without real-world proof. It takes concrete behavioral data - like
watching actual UX Cam session recordings - to expose exactly why a standard
desktop interaction pattern like deep comment threading completely falls apart on a
mobile interface.
Unification is not replication
Making a web layout "work on mobile" is a lazy shortcut. To build a truly cohesive
experience across platforms, you have to rewrite the feature's rules for a smaller
screen. A high-contrast touch reaction on a phone needs to feel just as natural and
rewarding as typing a full reply on desktop.
Constraint improves interaction value
Designing around the harsh space limitations of a phone screen forced us to innovate
rather than compromise. The expandable reply cards we built out of necessity proved
so clean and effective that the core Design System team is now integrating them back
into desktop.
ALONSO ROSADO
AI-first Product Designer shipping full
products, end to end.