Confesssy
UI, Branding
2022
Project overview
Brief
Confesssy is a platform for anonymous messages exchange. Similar to the infamous 'Saraha' platform, but improved and tailored for the region of India.
Role
Designing the platform UX, UI, and interaction, the project brand, and assist in a marketing strategy.
Research
Secondary research
The secondary research showed us how serious this fun project is, and opened our eyes to the huge responsibilities to build safe platform as well as usable.
The birth of Saraha:
Feeds into: Mission statement
Saraha was a Saudi platform that was published in 2016 to give employees the ability to critic their employers anonymously.
Users share public links so others can write them anonymous messages.
The service soon gained momentum outside the workplace marketplace in the Middle East and was advertised as a “platform to build confidence”.
The rise of Saraha:
Feeds into: Social media integration
Saraha app was published on the U.S. App Store in Jun 13, 2017.
Two weeks after Snapchat released an update that allowed users to share links, Saraha downloads numbers have skyrocketed and it became the number one on the U.S. App Store charts, and soon in other countries from the U.K. to New Zealand.
Saraha reached nearly 100 million registered users by the end of Sep 2017 and the website registered 130 million visits most of witch were from the US with 76 million, then the UK second with 16 million.
Egypt had the largest number of registered users among the Arabic-speaking countries with 2.5 million.
In India, it was the most popular Android app.
The downfall of Saraha:
Social responsibility 1
Reading hundreds of collected messages from 2017 was an emotional experience that alerted us to the social responsibility of building such a platform.
The service was abused and many users suffered from cyberbullying. The app was taken down from the App Store and Google Play early in 2018 due to legal cases and petitions in different countries.
The upside of Saraha:
Social responsibility 2
Although many young girls suffered severely on the platform due to the anonymity of senders, many were able to share real-life stories of abuse with activist and journalists using the platform.
The platform helped many young people to overcome difficult situations in their lives. And the app in general was used as intended, for positive criticism.
The Indian NGO, Ungender, upscaled the original intended use of Sarahahh to tackle the issues of sexual harassment in their effort to make workplaces legally compliant.
The upside of Saraha:
Legal responsibility
Similar and evolved concepts appeared in the app markets after introducing legal terms to address cyberharrasing issues, like age restriction.
▶️ Video: Responsive Design
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Client review
"Absolute gem of a designer. I went with Fares after considering many designers. He was by far the best and at really affordable price. A great partner to work with and will not hesitate to give his own ideas. Thank you for all your help. Best of luck."