Kangaroo
Kangaroo aimed to create a more interactive and engaging platform for fans of celebrities and influencers, going beyond the passive interactions offered by existing social media.
October 21’ - August 22’ / UX/UI Designer
As the UX/UI designer at Kangaroo, I:
Created user flows, wireframes, and prototypes, which I presented directly to the founder.
Conducted qualitative user interviews and usability tests for feature development and validating design decisions.
Analyzed test data and wrote comprehensive reports
Team
I was the UX/UI designer on a 10-person team alongside the CEO and founder, CTO, head of design, head of narrative, head of growth, three software engineers, and an illustrator. I reported directly to the head of design and the CEO.
Role
The App
The Kangaroo app featured interactive episodes written by our head writer, allowing users to play through stories featuring celebrities and influencers’ IP. With branching narratives, users could make choices that shaped how each story unfolded. They also had the option to remix stories, using existing templates to edit dialogue and create their own versions.
The Problem
After spearheading the company’s rebrand and our social media launch, we saw thousands of sign-ups, but once the app launched, engagement lagged—users weren’t spending time on the platform. This led me to explore a key question:
How might we boost user engagement and retention?
Research and Testing
Diary Studies
To understand our user’s habits on the Kangaroo app, we conducted diary studies where we studied four users over two weeks and had them log what they did, how they felt, and the challenges they faced. It was clear that users enjoyed and valued customizing their avatars. They felt that their avatar was a key part of them enjoying their experience. However, they disliked only seeing their avatar while playing the episodes.
Solution 1: Your Avatar Takes Center Stage
Profile
Because users disliked only being able to see their customized avatar in the episodes and felt that their avatar was central to their experience, I redesigned the profile to make the avatar central to the experience. Now, users can view their full avatar—rather than just a circular crop—by sliding down the profile shelf. This change allows users to see their avatar in its entirety and provides an easy way to edit it directly from their profile.
Avatar Editor
Before starting the refresh, we conducted usability testing to uncover users' biggest pain points with the avatar editor. We found that four out of five users didn’t realize they could scroll through the categories, which resulted in indirect success in avatar creation and direct success primarily through trial and error.
Solution: I replaced the horizontal scroll with larger, vertically scrollable category blocks, positioning the last row slightly off-screen to clearly indicate that more content was available. For subcategories, I retained horizontal scrolling but added arrows to guide users on how to navigate through the options.
After completing the profile and avatar editor flows, I interviewed 5 people for usability testing to confirm that the new designs were usable. 5/5 people were able to successfully complete the tasks they were given.
While these the UI refresh was completed and approved by the founder for implementation, Kangaroo decided to switch gears before these changes were officially launched and therefore, I was not able to track the impact that these changes had on the product. I would have liked to discover if making the profile and avatar editor more usable and interactive increased user engagement for both those features and the gameplay itself. I would have looked at sser retention and also conducted interview for qualitative user feedback.
Testing and Success Indicators
Retrospective
As a designer, I value research and testing, and my time at Kangaroo reinforced just how essential they are—both in saving time and money and in ensuring product success. While we did a great job collaborating and developing new features, I wish I had a stronger understanding of who our users were and the core problem we were solving. Without that clarity, we risked falling into feature creep rather than addressing the root of the issue.
I would have liked to better align design decisions with both user needs and company goals to ensure we were solving the right problem. While the rebrand and social media efforts successfully drove thousands of sign-ups, that initial excitement didn’t translate into long-term user retention or engagement. With a limited user base, it became difficult to iterate based on real user behavior, which signaled that the app wasn’t fully meeting a need.
Rather than continuing to build on an existing solution, I would have prioritized deeper user research and testing to understand why retention was low. Identifying these challenges earlier could have informed a stronger product direction before a pivot became necessary. Given the constraints we faced, we made the best decisions possible at the time, but this experience reinforced the importance of validating ideas early to ensure we’re building something that truly resonates with users.