curatorial + archival
art direction
writing
info
SUBSTACK (S)
logo and identity rebrand, ux research, experience design
Hannah Zhang - Art Direction, Creative Strategy
Michelle Gan - Product Design
1. BACKGROUND:
Substack is an online platform that was built to connect writers to readers, providing publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters and long-form content. My friend Michelle and I noticed that amongst our communities of people who are avid readers and writers, there was a high interest but lack of engagement with the platform. We sought to understand why this gap exists and re-imagine alternative solutions to Substack’s goal of expanding discovery and building more organic communities.
PRIMARY FINDINGS:
These findings revealed a critical disconnect between how users hope to engage with the content and the platform’s predomoninantly public nature. The lack of private spaces discouraged active participation on the platform. Ineffective recommendations also diminished the likelihood of users discovering new writers and content. These factors create a cycle where users primarily consume content passively, limiting overall engagement.
How might we encourage active and sustained participation with on-platform content and reduce barriers to engagement?
Given the imbalance of public and private spaces that the users revealed, we propose a solution that reinvests in the user’s private sphere through the ability to curate groups of content called stacks. This feature provides a malleable space where individuals can explore and build a reflexive identity, constructing who they are and who they might want to be perceived as. Instead of passive consumption, users can actively engage with the content, introducing the agency to create, meaning-make, and share - without necessarily being a writer. This deconstructs writer-centralized engagement, encouraging other organic communities to form. The feature also leads to indirect recommendations of new content from trusted sources, significantly increasing the potential of discovering new writers that users will actually like.
5. A NEW VISUAL IDENTITY
I redesigned Substack's icon inspired by a starfish's decentralized regeneration ability, reflecting our vision for organic, decentralized engagement. The new star-shaped logo aligns with modern browser favorites icons while supporting our curation feature. This enables users to meaningfully organize content without being writers, breaking down the reader-writer hierarchy and allowing ideas to naturally evolve as posts are curated across different contexts.
2. USER RESEARCH:
We spoke with five users to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their experiences with Substack. In particular, we focused on usage patterns, barriers to engagement, and interaction with existing discovery and community features.PRIMARY FINDINGS:
- Users found the in-app navigation unintuitive and the organization/content on the landing page very overwhelming, often avoiding these aspects altogether.
- Users felt intimidated to engage with the platform beyond passive consumption (reading posts from writer’s they’ve already subscribed to), because nearly all action on the platform is perceived to be public.
- Users were not persuaded by the recommendation algorithm, which is the app’s primary method of discovery. They felt that the algorithm consistently delivered content that lacked relevance, and distrusted the machine to recommend something that would be worth reading. This led to the infrequent discovery of new writers.
These findings revealed a critical disconnect between how users hope to engage with the content and the platform’s predomoninantly public nature. The lack of private spaces discouraged active participation on the platform. Ineffective recommendations also diminished the likelihood of users discovering new writers and content. These factors create a cycle where users primarily consume content passively, limiting overall engagement.
3. DESIGN CHALLENGE:
Given these insights, we identified a core design challenge:How might we encourage active and sustained participation with on-platform content and reduce barriers to engagement?
4. DESIGN SOLUTION:
REINVESTING IN USER’S PRIVATE SPHERE THROUGH CURATIONGiven the imbalance of public and private spaces that the users revealed, we propose a solution that reinvests in the user’s private sphere through the ability to curate groups of content called stacks. This feature provides a malleable space where individuals can explore and build a reflexive identity, constructing who they are and who they might want to be perceived as. Instead of passive consumption, users can actively engage with the content, introducing the agency to create, meaning-make, and share - without necessarily being a writer. This deconstructs writer-centralized engagement, encouraging other organic communities to form. The feature also leads to indirect recommendations of new content from trusted sources, significantly increasing the potential of discovering new writers that users will actually like.
5. A NEW VISUAL IDENTITY
I redesigned Substack's icon inspired by a starfish's decentralized regeneration ability, reflecting our vision for organic, decentralized engagement. The new star-shaped logo aligns with modern browser favorites icons while supporting our curation feature. This enables users to meaningfully organize content without being writers, breaking down the reader-writer hierarchy and allowing ideas to naturally evolve as posts are curated across different contexts.
+1 (626) 623-2516 | @hannahhhzhang