Project Intro

About Frankly

Frankly™ is an open-source video-based platform that fosters constructive dialogue and collaborative decision-making. Built on Kazm Video’s codebase acquired by Harvard in 2024, Frankly was reimagined by the Applied Social Media Lab.

I joined the team to lead a full UX overhaul—building a robust design system, prototyping new features, validating ideas, and collaborating closely with engineers for rapid deployment.
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My Role

Senior UX Designer

Tool

Figma, Notion, Github

Adopted by

Deliberations.us,
AllSides,
Living Room Conversations,
Listen First Project,
Unify America

Major Design Output

Design System Haul

I led the creation of a scalable design system built on the Material Design 3 toolkit, transforming previous fragmented UI into a cohesive, efficient framework.
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By consolidating 13 inconsistent button styles into just 5 standardized variants, we improved product consistency, streamlined collaboration between design and development, and significantly reduced build time.

Choosing a neutral palette majorly benefits from two perspectives:
1) A calm, inclusive, and neutral environment makes all topics and voices feel welcome.
2) It makes the platform adaptable to the unique styles of diverse communities and allows communities to personalize their own colors in the future without clashing.

Design-Led Product Definition

I led the early product definition process by running ideation and feedback sessions with our power users to map user flows, gather insights, and co‑create potential features.

These sessions informed the PRDs I authored, which connected user behaviors, product goals, and technical feasibility into clear, actionable requirements. By combining direct user collaboration with structured documentation, I ensured alignment across design, product, and engineering—positioning design as a strategic driver in shaping the product.

Streamlining Engineer Handoff

I worked closely with PMs and engineers to ensure a smooth transition from design to development.

My handoff process is structured and collaborative:
1) I create annotated Figma prototypes that clearly document interaction rules and edge cases, allowing engineers to reference them anytime.

2) I also lead dedicated handoff sessions with PMs and developers to walk through user flows, explain design decisions and alternatives, and surface potential questions early.

This approach keeps everyone aligned and helps maintain a smooth and efficient deployment process.

Design Enhancement

This section highlights the transformation from the original experience to the redesigned solution. By addressing pain points in usability and consistency, I delivered a cleaner, more intuitive product that improved both user satisfaction and development efficiency

BEFORE

Dense table layout: all data presented in a rigid spreadsheet style with very little breathing room, and the spreadsheet-y style makes the visual more dull and less inviting
Lack of hierarchy: titles, metadata, and actions (like “Download”) blend together without strong visual distinction, it is really hard for users to identify key information and take actions

AFTER

Event Card Presentation: with the new design, now each event is surfaced as a visually distinct card with an event cover image, title, date, and metadata — much easier to locate information
Streamlined actions: “Data Download” is now clearly aligned with each card, improving discoverability

For more design details and processes, please feel free to reach out!

Solo to Synchronized

I was hired at the Applied Social Media Lab as the only designer. Facing a bit tech-heavy team as the main design source was absolutely challenging in many different ways but I managed to turn them into opportunities that help the team move to the right direction:

Limited internal design resources

When I was the only designer spread across several projects, some of our team members also were bouncing between tasks and losing momentum.

I proposed a weekly rotation plan so we focused on one project at a time. We rolled it out across teams, and the difference was immediate—clearer priorities, deeper design thinking, and engineers shipping faster with fewer interruptions.

Balancing iterative updates with long-term goals

Since we rolled out changes incrementally - many ideas were excellent but out of the scope for current deployment - I created living documentation to track current deployments, upcoming changes, and the bigger UX vision—ensuring design consistency while planning for future improvements.

Lack of a large scale design fellows

I initiated and facilitated recurring Design Jam sessions with my PM and power users like Unify America.

This helped me catch UX issues and think through an intuitive and concrete user flow before putting my pen on paper. Co-design session also helped us align on the real problems and final design decisions. It was a lightweight cadence but had heavy impact on user experience and product vision.