Overview
Goodpoints is a community-based news application from a company I co-founded. It features a front page, topics page, and organizations page — all ordered based on user interaction with content. The desire was to gamify news content to create highly engaged communities around specific topics. I created the UX, visual design, and branding in collaboration with the other two founders.
Product Goals
- Create an engaged community
- Let the community dictate what content is important
- Transparently reward and track engagement
- Use knowledge from gaming to add fun, competition, and a player journey
The Front Page
The Front Page features an upvoting system that surfaces content the community cares about. We clearly indicate the amount of +1s a post has so users understand why certain posts are ranked at the top. We focused on the "+" animation to catch the user's eye and clearly indicate the value of interactions. Influenced by Instagram's redesign, we kept visuals and UX simple — content is top priority.
Testing the Template
To test whether we could spin up another version of the app quickly, we released "3 Points" on iOS — a basketball-focused version. We scraped content from top social media accounts and player feeds. It was a good reminder that you'll do much better if you truly have a passion for the subject matter. The template proved the concept could scale to different topics and communities.