Duration
2025 - Present
Role
Founder & Lead Designer
Category
Product Design, User Research
Context
In 2025, major social media companies changed their Terms of Use to remove explicit protections for LGBTQ+ people. Extreme and bigoted content on Meta, X, and YouTube is not only tolerated but can be monetized. With this "vibe shift" I wanted to explore how this community has changed their behavior on social media platforms.
Problem
What do LGBTQ+ users want out of using social media in 2026? How does this demographic build community now that these platforms are changing?
Research
I conducted seven interviews with LGBTQ+-identifying Millennials in the US and Canada. I also conducted a pretotyping survey with Instagram ads, reaching 1200+ impressions.
I found:
1) My participants want to promote themselves and their work, so they need support to grow their platform just as much as a feed of relevant content.
2) It is getting harder for LGBTQ+ people to be authentic online and build community.
3) There's a lot of interest in connecting in real life, and digital and physical spaces tend to overlap a lot.
I turned my focus from user-generated content to how people find events and each other in real life. I conducted a competitive analysis on Facebook Events, Eventbrite, and Meetup.
Wireframes
My original layout ideas were based on Discord communities , but I shifted to instead focus on finding events and discussing them in one place. I shifted to a dynamic tagging system for finding topics and venue-moderated discussions on each page.
All of the event info is clear and easy to find, plus the ticket and RSVP options are super straightforward.
I fell in love with the "Inner Circle" as a way to have a curated feed with posts only from those you trust.
Design System
For accessibility purposes (Android is the most used mobile OS globally) I based my design system on Material 3. My brand colors and typeface communicate friendliness while being gender-neutral and clean. I wanted to avoid gimmicks and make Gayborhood look good no matter the age of the user's phone.
Screens & Prototype
Here's a link to the Figma prototype for regular users, and here's the prototype for business accounts.
Gayborhood has two user groups: event attendees and event hosts. I built two different flows for RSVPing to an event with a group, and creating an event as a host.
Accessibility concerns, like parking and ADA accommodations are easy to input for hosts and easy to find for attendees.
The profile page is where you can adjust the Inner Circle and see past events. For hosts it also includes event analytics and the ability to designate accounts as staff members or promoters with special access.
Concluding Thoughts
As the app grows I'd want to introduce:
1) Tools for user-generated content that make sense for this community
2) A premium vacation-planning experience.
Expanding internationally means greater emphasis on safety features (if LGBTQ+ people need to be more discrete) and technical challenges. (Gayborhood should still work even with slower download speeds and spotty Wi-Fi).
And now a brief note on politics…