ROLE · Product Designer (team project) | CATEGORY · Digital Scrapbooking | TIMELINE · Aug 2026 – Present
My role: I designed the home page, memory creation flow, and settings. I tested with 10 participants, then removed required categories and shortened capture. I also used a design system to create the lighter, vintage scrapbook style.
The Problem
Photos, tickets, songs, locations, and small details often become separated across different apps. At the same time, sharing meaningful moments on social platforms can introduce pressure to make those moments feel polished or worth posting. Our research involved 10 people and explored how they saved, organized, and shared meaningful experiences.
Sharing required preparation.
Participants chose the best image, edited it, and anticipated how it would be received on Instagram. Habits from Instagram and TikTok made moments feel worth saving only when they also felt worth posting.
Organization created pressure.
Categories, folders, prompts, and streaks helped at first, but eventually made saving a moment feel like a task that had to be completed correctly.
Sharing lacked a comfortable middle ground.
Participants either kept memories private in camera rolls or posted them to broad audiences. They wanted to preserve or share moments only with the people who were part of the moment.
Turning Research Into Product Decisions
MMENTO combines lightweight capture, a personal archive, and friends-only sharing. A memory can include photos, dates, places, people, and context. Saved memories remain available for revisiting, while selected entries can be shared with friends through comments and visible reactions.
In testing sessions, entries named more specific people, places, and reasons a moment mattered. This was an observation, not an experiment. We kept the feed friends-only because participants seemed less concerned with presenting a polished version of each memory. However, longer testing will show whether or not that pressure returns among close friends.
Designing and Iterating with the Team
I worked on MMENTO as a product designer within a small team, designing the home page, memory creation flow, and settings. The team developed a functional web application, currently in closed beta, so we could evaluate design decisions in a working experience rather than only a static prototype.
Capturing asks for one decision at a time. Dates, places, people, and context remain optional, while friends can comment and leave visible reactions on shared memories.
The first version required categories and used more prompts. I tested with 10 participants and found that those choices slowed capture and made simple memories feel as though they needed a complete story.
I removed required categories and shortened the capture flow after testing showed they slowed saving. The team also made context optional. Participants saved more easily when they did not have to classify a memory first. If retrieval becomes difficult as archives grow, we would introduce organization after capture.
Outcome
Participants understood the capture, revisit, and sharing model. One returning participant stopped expecting categories after seeing how few memories she had saved. The small sample served as direction, not concrete evidence. Retention, real world capture volume, and longer-term sharing behavior remain unmeasured.
Reflection
Removing required categories made capture easier, but organization may become valuable as an archive grows. The lesson was not to eliminate features, but to introduce organization only when it solves a real retrieval problem.
Other projects
© 2026 Jeffrey Liang