Insight 01
Screen density limited content exposure.
At 1.5–2.5 notes per screen, each user gets very few chances to capture interest before giving up and scrolling down.
Internship · Shipped Q3 2025
Redesigning feed layout for notes
Transforming browsing experience around density and hierarchy, shipping lifts in impressions, interactions, and account follows.
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
Aug - Sep 2025
Collaboration
Software Engineer
Product Manager
Data Scientist
Focused Platform
iOS, Android
Overview
Lemon8 is a global lifestyle community app powered by TikTok, where millions of users turn for honest, hot-take recommendations on beauty, fashion, and travel.
Within the app, there’s a feature named Notes: a space for low-effort, everyday sharing, opening content creation beyond creators to everyday users.
Switching to Notes Tab
Scroll down to view more notes
The Problem
Users flocked into Notes, then stopped scrolling, and stopped coming back
When the first few notes don't resonates, the interest is missed early, retention and scroll depth decline fast...
Key Findings
In the feed, every element competed for the user's attention.
Good information hierarchy isn't about making everything stand out, it's about letting users see what interests them faster.
Insight 02
Identity of publisher outranked the content.
From viewer pov, the who took a full line. The what had to wait.
Design problem i worked with…
How might we attract more users to consume and engage with notes content upon first glance?
Key Solutions
Re-sequence the feed: content first, identity after.
Both insights pointed at the same root cause — the layout hadn't decided what mattered. Every change below follows from fixing that order.
01 Let content lead
The image and caption move to the top of the card, taking the space identity used to hold. Nothing is removed — the order changes, so what stops a scroll arrives first.
02 Fit more chances per screen
Tightening spacing between username, caption, and media raised notes per screen from ~1.8 to ~2.2. Each additional note is another chance for something to land before a user leaves.
The constraint was readability: past a certain point, denser stops meaning more seen and starts meaning nothing read.
03 Return identity after the read
Identity doesn't disappear — it surfaces once a user has engaged with the content, so recognition feels earned rather than announced. Follow rate rose 5.1%.
Research & process
How does hierarchy differ across platforms and what does each optimize for?
I looked at how leading platforms structure their feeds, not just for layout patterns but for what each was optimizing to prioritize.
Groups 01
Content leads, identity follows
What's said matters more than who said it
Groups 02
Identity carries the content
Who said it shapes how it reads
I compared how each platform decides what gets read first.
The rest of this project is password protected. Reach out to for details.The rest of this project is password protected
Reach out to for details.
Impact
+0.00%
Impressions per user
+0.0%
Accounts followed
+0.0%
Likes
+0.0%
Comments
My Takeaways
What I learned from notes layout optimization
Knowing what's worth fixing matters more than fixing it well.
I came in with 8+ things to improve. Most were real problems, but only a few would move what Notes was measured on. Sorting them against product goals meant dropping ideas I liked.
Every change costs something. Pick the cost on purpose.
Density costs readability. Moving identity later costs immediate recognition. The work wasn't avoiding those trade-offs — it was choosing which one to accept, and defending it.
How I would do it differently with AI
Test every content type, not just the clean one.
Density isn't just px gaps— quotes, reposts, and multi-image notes all size differently. I built those variants in Figma. AI could generate them from a matrix and stress-test the string limits before handoff.
My intern days at Lemon8
Other designs I did at Lemon8…
Understanding user preferences for a better feed
Users skip interest questions at signup, so the feed starts generic. We ask again in-feed, once the payoff is easier to see — and the feed gets sharper from there.
Recognizing search intent, made easier
Users often screenshot content just to search it elsewhere. I brainstormed how to bring the search in-app: hold a card for similar results, or screenshot page to trigger search image.
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