Back

Back

Place

Place

2015

2015

2015

Client

Backplane/ Place by Lady Gaga

Problem

Place was facing two key challenges: a decline in new community creation and a rise in inactive or abandoned communities. The business goal was to uncover the root cause of these issues and develop solution to reignite engagement and community growth.

Research Insights

Approach

Our legacy members from Backplane formed the core group for feedback and focus groups. I interviewed as many as possible to understand their frustrations and uncover why engagement was declining. These insights led to the creation of user personas, which helped clarify key needs and surfaced three major themes: Activity, Monetization, and Growth.

To broaden the perspective, I also conducted a competitive audit. I identified platforms with similar or adjacent community features, including Facebook Groups, Reddit, Meetup, LinkedIn Groups, and Ning. This research helped me understand what kept users loyal elsewhere and shaped the hypotheses that guided the next phase of design.

I focused on designing practical, high-impact improvements across three core areas: Activity, Discovery and Growth, and Monetization. My goal was not to reinvent the product, but to evolve it bringing in familiar, user-friendly patterns while making the platform feel more personalized, dynamic, and current.

  • Prioritized modern content tools to improve engagement and communication

  • Revamped the community creation flow to reduce drop-off and increase group creation

  • Introduced interest and description tagging in both community creation and onboarding to improve discoverability

  • Launched in-app support for paid content, subscriptions, and ticketed events

  • Built member management tools to help community owners track new, active, and inactive users


Process

Started with low-effort, high-impact updates by adding familiar media tools to increase interaction

  • Introduced in-app GIF search and emoji support to enhance expressiveness

  • Enabled community owners to upload and use custom emoji unique to their spaces

  • Added the ability for users to post photo collages within content

  • Refreshed the modular card system to better showcase these expanded media formats

  • Moved in to tackling Monitization , Grow and Discovery

Research Insights

Our legacy members from Backplane formed the core group for feedback and focus groups. I interviewed as many as possible to understand their frustrations and uncover why engagement was declining. These insights led to the creation of user personas, which helped clarify key needs and surfaced three major themes: Activity, Monetization, and Growth.

To broaden the perspective, I also conducted a competitive audit. I identified platforms with similar or adjacent community features, including Facebook Groups, Reddit, Meetup, LinkedIn Groups, and Ning. This research helped me understand what kept users loyal elsewhere and shaped the hypotheses that guided the next phase of design.

Approach

I focused on designing practical, high-impact improvements across three core areas: Activity, Discovery and Growth, and Monetization. My goal was not to reinvent the product, but to evolve it bringing in familiar, user-friendly patterns while making the platform feel more personalized, dynamic, and current.

  • Prioritized modern content tools to improve engagement and communication

  • Revamped the community creation flow to reduce drop-off and increase group creation

  • Introduced interest and description tagging in both community creation and onboarding to improve discoverability

  • Launched in-app support for paid content, subscriptions, and ticketed events

  • Built member management tools to help community owners track new, active, and inactive users


Process

Content tools to improve engagement and communication

Content tools to improve engagement and communication

Content tools to improve engagement and communication

Paid and Subscription based groups, content, and events

To support community owners in sustaining their spaces, I created tools for monetization directly within Place. This included a subscription model for exclusive content and experiences, as well as built-in support for paid events, eliminating the need for third-party tools and allowing owners to manage everything in one place.

Growth and discovery

The homepage prioritized a small set of popular groups, mostly legacy partners and big brands, making it hard for smaller communities to gain traction. I introduced an interest-tagging system. Community owners added tags to their groups, and new users selected interests during onboarding. This allowed the homepage to surface relevant groups based on user preferences, not only popularity.


I improved member tools, giving community owners visibility into who was new, active, or inactive. Prompts like “Say hello to new members” helped spark timely engagement and build stronger group connections.

Outcome

While we didn't get to implement all the planned features before Place closed its doors, we successfully rolled out emoji and GIF reactions, image uploads, and improved notifications. Fortunately, the image capture and emoji features had previously been built (but turned off), saving valuable development time.

We tested the updated features—in-app images, emojis, GIF reactions, and improved notifications—through pilot programs with some of our largest groups. Early results showed a 5% increase in engagement, confirming that we were headed in the right direction.

Outcome

While we didn't get to implement all the planned features before Place closed its doors, we successfully rolled out emoji and GIF reactions, image uploads, and improved notifications. Fortunately, the image capture and emoji features had previously been built (but turned off), saving valuable development time.

We tested the updated features—in-app images, emojis, GIF reactions, and improved notifications—through pilot programs with some of our largest groups. Early results showed a 5% increase in engagement, confirming that we were headed in the right direction.

What I learned

While I don’t believe products should be built solely around trends, staying aware of them is essential. Platforms that fail to evolve risk becoming irrelevant, and that was Place’s biggest issue. It had not kept up with the expectations of modern digital communities, leaving users without the tools they had come to rely on.

I am someone who thrives on ideas and often generate multiple solutions at once. But this was not about creating something entirely new. It was about bringing familiar, effective features into a new context to make Place feel modern, intuitive, and aligned with what users needed.