Showing Signs of Life

Building
UX Research
Consumer Social
Mobile

TL;DR

Most Reddit users drop in, grab an answer, and leave. The sense of community never comes into view, and few cross into participating because posting feels high-stakes and other people appear invisible. We’re designing lightweight, mobile-first ways to feel present among others and to contribute without pressure.

My Role: UX Researcher
Product Designer
Timeline: Feb 2026 – Present
Team: Cindy Ly
Emily Wong
Jiayi Sun
Keila Braden
Reddit Partners: Sr. UX Researcher
Staff Product Designer
Community Support Specialist

Background

Belonging is a retention problem

Reddit partnered with our capstone team to study how Gen Z users find community. Participation is the engine of the business: it supplies the content Reddit runs on and turns visitors into signed-in users who stay. Yet the vast majority of users only ever watch from the sidelines.

Problem

Easy to consume, hard to belong to

Users treat Reddit like a search engine. We set out to understand what stands between showing up and joining in.

Our North Star

How do we lower the stakes of participating, and make the presence of others felt, so people can move from lurking to belonging?

Methods

Mixed methods, foundation first

We studied community where Reddit has it, where competitors have it, and where it forms offline.

Competitive research
Benchmarking Reddit against platforms like Discord.
8 in-depth interviews
Across three profiles: Redditors, members of other online communities, and members of in-person communities.

Findings

What blocks people from belonging

Key insight: Belonging comes from presence and recognition, not content alone.

Posting feels vulnerable Users fear saying the wrong thing in front of a large audience, since every post is public, permanent, and scored through upvotes and downvotes.

The rules gatekeep Every subreddit has its own rules to learn before a single post, and removals can feel arbitrary, discouraging people from trying again.

Everyone stays a stranger Pseudonymity keeps users siloed in their own sessions, unable to sense who else is online at the same moment.

There’s no low-stakes way in Meaningful participation means a full public post or comment. When casual talk does spring up, strict subreddits moderate it away to protect quality, removing the organic interactions where belonging starts.

“I wouldn’t post as much because if you say the wrong thing, even if it’s slightly wrong, someone pedantic in the comments is going to reply and be like... erm actually.”