Terrene
Social app where you build your world, not your feed.
Social app where you build your world, not your feed.
Social
App
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
4 weeks
Platform
Mobile
Team
Me & 2 Designers, 1 PM
02.
The questions
Terrene starts with a question — not "who are you," but something stranger. What's a place you keep returning to in your mind? Name three things you'd take if you had to leave everything behind. What's something that's hard to explain to other people? Pick a time of day, a temperature, and a sound.
Four questions, asked one at a time, each one probing a different facet of identity: a place, a set of essentials, an interiority, an atmosphere. I wrote these questions to feel like prompts a thoughtful friend might ask — the kind that make you stop and think, not the kind you can answer reflexively. Most onboarding flows ask for facts (name, email, interests from a tag cloud) and assemble a profile. Terrene's onboarding asks for fragments and assembles a world.
02.
The questions
Terrene starts with a question — not "who are you," but something stranger. What's a place you keep returning to in your mind? Name three things you'd take if you had to leave everything behind. What's something that's hard to explain to other people? Pick a time of day, a temperature, and a sound.
Four questions, asked one at a time, each one probing a different facet of identity: a place, a set of essentials, an interiority, an atmosphere. I wrote these questions to feel like prompts a thoughtful friend might ask — the kind that make you stop and think, not the kind you can answer reflexively. Most onboarding flows ask for facts (name, email, interests from a tag cloud) and assemble a profile. Terrene's onboarding asks for fragments and assembles a world.
02.
The questions
Terrene starts with a question — not "who are you," but something stranger. What's a place you keep returning to in your mind? Name three things you'd take if you had to leave everything behind. What's something that's hard to explain to other people? Pick a time of day, a temperature, and a sound.
Four questions, asked one at a time, each one probing a different facet of identity: a place, a set of essentials, an interiority, an atmosphere. I wrote these questions to feel like prompts a thoughtful friend might ask — the kind that make you stop and think, not the kind you can answer reflexively. Most onboarding flows ask for facts (name, email, interests from a tag cloud) and assemble a profile. Terrene's onboarding asks for fragments and assembles a world.
03.
What happens next
As you answer, an orb floating above the questions shifts in color and texture. Each answer changes it — by the time the questions end, it's saturated and specific, no longer the pale shape it started as. Then the orb begins to grow. This is the loading phase, but there's no progress bar — just the orb, gradually transforming into terrain. I'm proudest of this move. Most apps treat loading as something to hide; I realized the wait was the most important moment in the whole experience. So I let it be the climax instead of the friction.
03.
What happens next
As you answer, an orb floating above the questions shifts in color and texture. Each answer changes it — by the time the questions end, it's saturated and specific, no longer the pale shape it started as. Then the orb begins to grow. This is the loading phase, but there's no progress bar — just the orb, gradually transforming into terrain. I'm proudest of this move. Most apps treat loading as something to hide; I realized the wait was the most important moment in the whole experience. So I let it be the climax instead of the friction.
03.
What happens next
As you answer, an orb floating above the questions shifts in color and texture. Each answer changes it — by the time the questions end, it's saturated and specific, no longer the pale shape it started as. Then the orb begins to grow. This is the loading phase, but there's no progress bar — just the orb, gradually transforming into terrain. I'm proudest of this move. Most apps treat loading as something to hide; I realized the wait was the most important moment in the whole experience. So I let it be the climax instead of the friction.
04.
How you find each other
Most social apps want you to make snap judgments about people. You see a feed, a profile photo, a bio, a curated grid — and within seconds, you've decided whether someone is interesting. Terrene asks you to slow down.
Other people's worlds appear in your orbit, but they're blurred. You can see that someone is there — a soft, colored orb in the dark — but you can't yet see what kind of place they've built. Each blurred orb has a name and nothing else. To know more, you have to approach.
When you do, the world resolves. The blur clears. You see the shape of someone's planet from a distance — their landscape, the rough character of what they've built — but you're still outside it, not yet inside. From here you can choose to enter and explore, or move on. Approach is an act, not a swipe.
04.
How you find each other
Most social apps want you to make snap judgments about people. You see a feed, a profile photo, a bio, a curated grid — and within seconds, you've decided whether someone is interesting. Terrene asks you to slow down.
Other people's worlds appear in your orbit, but they're blurred. You can see that someone is there — a soft, colored orb in the dark — but you can't yet see what kind of place they've built. Each blurred orb has a name and nothing else. To know more, you have to approach.
When you do, the world resolves. The blur clears. You see the shape of someone's planet from a distance — their landscape, the rough character of what they've built — but you're still outside it, not yet inside. From here you can choose to enter and explore, or move on. Approach is an act, not a swipe.
04.
How you find each other
Most social apps want you to make snap judgments about people. You see a feed, a profile photo, a bio, a curated grid — and within seconds, you've decided whether someone is interesting. Terrene asks you to slow down.
Other people's worlds appear in your orbit, but they're blurred. You can see that someone is there — a soft, colored orb in the dark — but you can't yet see what kind of place they've built. Each blurred orb has a name and nothing else. To know more, you have to approach.
When you do, the world resolves. The blur clears. You see the shape of someone's planet from a distance — their landscape, the rough character of what they've built — but you're still outside it, not yet inside. From here you can choose to enter and explore, or move on. Approach is an act, not a swipe.
01.
Performance is exhausting.
Most social platforms flatten us into a feed. Our identity becomes just a list of posts, our relationships become a follower count, and the parts of us that don't fit into either of those become invisible. Terrene asks a different question: what if our presence online was a place we built, rather than a stream we maintained?
01.
Performance is exhausting.
Most social platforms flatten us into a feed. Our identity becomes just a list of posts, our relationships become a follower count, and the parts of us that don't fit into either of those become invisible. Terrene asks a different question: what if our presence online was a place we built, rather than a stream we maintained?
01.
Performance is exhausting.
Most social platforms flatten us into a feed. Our identity becomes just a list of posts, our relationships become a follower count, and the parts of us that don't fit into either of those become invisible. Terrene asks a different question: what if our presence online was a place we built, rather than a stream we maintained?
Inside someone's world, you see the shape of their interests rendered as places. Books mean a reading area. Cooking becomes a kitchen. Writing has its own quiet corner. You leave a message or you don't. You come back or you don't. Nothing demands a response.
05.
Your world
Your own world looks like everyone else's worlds look to you — a place from the outside, with everything you've built visible. But here, you can also adjust it. You can shift the mood. You can rearrange what's on the surface. You can even reimagine it entirely if what you wrote one year no longer feels like who you are now.
05.
Your world
Your own world looks like everyone else's worlds look to you — a place from the outside, with everything you've built visible. But here, you can also adjust it. You can shift the mood. You can rearrange what's on the surface. You can even reimagine it entirely if what you wrote one year no longer feels like who you are now.
06.
Two sides of the same world
Daniel's world and your world are the same kind of object viewed from two sides. From the outside, your world is a place — something others arrive at, explore, and leave messages in. From the inside, it's something you tend. You can shift its mood when you feel different. You can rearrange when something changes. You can reimagine entirely when you've become someone new.
Most social platforms treat identity as fixed — your handle, your bio, the accumulated history that follows you. Terrene treats identity as seasonal. People change. Worlds should be able to change with them.
06.
Two sides of the same world
Daniel's world and your world are the same kind of object viewed from two sides. From the outside, your world is a place — something others arrive at, explore, and leave messages in. From the inside, it's something you tend. You can shift its mood when you feel different. You can rearrange when something changes. You can reimagine entirely when you've become someone new.
Most social platforms treat identity as fixed — your handle, your bio, the accumulated history that follows you. Terrene treats identity as seasonal. People change. Worlds should be able to change with them.
06.
Two sides of the same world
Daniel's world and your world are the same kind of object viewed from two sides. From the outside, your world is a place — something others arrive at, explore, and leave messages in. From the inside, it's something you tend. You can shift its mood when you feel different. You can rearrange when something changes. You can reimagine entirely when you've become someone new.
Most social platforms treat identity as fixed — your handle, your bio, the accumulated history that follows you. Terrene treats identity as seasonal. People change. Worlds should be able to change with them.
07.
A logo inspired by light and growth. The lit side is what's seen; the shadow is what's still to discover.
07.
A logo inspired by light and growth. The lit side is what's seen; the shadow is what's still to discover.
07.
A logo inspired by light and growth. The lit side is what's seen; the shadow is what's still to discover.
08.
What I learned
I started Terrene because I was tired of social media as it exists. I expected to end up with a critique of feeds and an alternative interface for browsing people. What I ended up with was something stranger — a small inhabited place, a slow approach mechanic, and a loading screen that's actually the climax. The interesting design moves weren't the ones I planned. They were the ones I noticed while working.
If there's anything Terrene taught me, it's that good design problems are often hiding inside the moments you'd normally try to optimize away. The wait, the silence, the friction of approaching someone slowly. Terrene only works because I stopped trying to fix those moments and started designing around them instead.
08.
What I learned
I started Terrene because I was tired of social media as it exists. I expected to end up with a critique of feeds and an alternative interface for browsing people. What I ended up with was something stranger — a small inhabited place, a slow approach mechanic, and a loading screen that's actually the climax. The interesting design moves weren't the ones I planned. They were the ones I noticed while working.
If there's anything Terrene taught me, it's that good design problems are often hiding inside the moments you'd normally try to optimize away. The wait, the silence, the friction of approaching someone slowly. Terrene only works because I stopped trying to fix those moments and started designing around them instead.
08.
What I learned
I started Terrene because I was tired of social media as it exists. I expected to end up with a critique of feeds and an alternative interface for browsing people. What I ended up with was something stranger — a small inhabited place, a slow approach mechanic, and a loading screen that's actually the climax. The interesting design moves weren't the ones I planned. They were the ones I noticed while working.
If there's anything Terrene taught me, it's that good design problems are often hiding inside the moments you'd normally try to optimize away. The wait, the silence, the friction of approaching someone slowly. Terrene only works because I stopped trying to fix those moments and started designing around them instead.