Lead game and product designer at LoveShark
Mochi was a kpop social platform and dance game for mobile with a vibrant community. I led the design of Mochi from concept through to launch and live-ops and explored the cutting edge of designing for friendships in multiplayer environments.
What is Mochi
Learn k-pop dances
Pick from a large library of hundreds of k-pop dances.
Realtime feeback
Our AI model detects your movements and compares it to the original so you always know how well you're dancing.
A kind community
Post your dances to a kind community of k-pop stans and make friends.
My role
LoveShark was a small startup. I joined as the 5th employee and it grew to 18 people strong.
I defined, maintained and communicated the design vision across the studio; Set up and lead rapid prototyping to validate and improve features; Used data, user research and analytics to drive the design in an iterative cycle; Ran design sprints and ideation workshops to collaboratively find solutions; Managed design-dev handover pipeline and improved design processes; Managed the design team including one to ones.
At LoveShark I worked edclosely with the engineering team to unlock the gameplay potential of machine learning and AI models. I also explored and educated the team on designing for friendships in multiplayer environments.
From early concept to live-ops
This is a very early prototype of Mochi. One month into working at LoveShark, I researched what UX flow would work best to balance learning dances while having fun doing so. I designed a flow and together with a Unity engineer we prototyped and tested this build. It became the core gameplay loop of Mochi.
Leadership
As lead I was in charge of cross-department communication to ensure smooth implementation and quality execution of the designs. Clear documentation, compelling pitching and leading inclusive ideation workshops was my day to day. I also ran one to ones with direct reports to foster an effective but also kind environment that brings out the best in teams.
Designing gameplay and social systems
Mochi is more than just a game or an app, it's a community. The features needed to both retain users and foster a kind environment where players could go from being stragers to becoming best friends.
I developed and iterated on a system of features that fostered friendships. Among many things, this was achieved by tying together gameplay progression systems with our users' friendship journeys.