A lifestyle community powered by TikTok
Lemon8 Rebranding
About
In 2021, I joined the design team as its first designer. The app was originally called “Sharee,” a name built around sharing and connecting people
As Sharee evolved into Lemon8 and shifted toward a younger 18-30 audience, the product needed a higher bar for beauty, quality, and brand trust. To support user acquisition, we reframed the product through brand value and relaunched it as Lemon8. The name comes from “Lemonade voice”: lemon signals freshness, while 8 suggests a sense of maximum energy
[1] Lifestyle community
The community is built around two core elements: people and content. In the early stage, we worked with potential creators across categories to shape the community tone and culture, then improved the content consumption experience through POI, post-view search, and recommendation strategy iterations
Container
A cup, bowl, or pot can all serve the same purpose: holding water. In Lemon8 consumption scenarios, we used consistent proportions and visual rules as the “container” for content, reducing operational cost while improving task completion, content consumption, and social engagement
[2] Content types
Compared with the image-led formats of Instagram and Pinterest, Lemon8’s text-and-image format carries more practical information and decision value
Video pages support vertical scrolling to expand consumption scenarios and adapt to user behaviors across regions and product stages
In the early community stage, we introduced region-specific design patterns based on local user behaviors and habits
Article details
Optimized the dual-column transition on the detail page to reduce perceived latency, improve smoothness, and increase content consumption
Highlight follow action
During development, the follow action in Japan and Southeast Asia was moved below the image to speed up page access. In the US, where follow intent was higher, the action stayed above the content. The latest version unifies follow placement across regions
[2.2] Video details
Engagement design process
The first version emphasized information utility: the save action was separated on the left, and comments appeared after video completion to encourage responses. As more TikTok users entered the product, we rebalanced the interaction layout for a clearer overall experience
Video progress bar
The consumption framework reduces information obstruction, opens up a larger viewing area, and supports quick vertical switching to increase willingness to keep watching
Optimized control-bar hit areas and interaction states to improve video operation
2-tab video player support [TH, ID, MY]
Users in Southeast Asia have strong video consumption intent
In Southeast Asia (TH, ID, MY), the bottom 2-tab structure was redesigned as an immersive video stream to expand video scenarios, support richer content formats, and improve watch time and retention
[3] Design System
As the rebrand matured, the design system shifted from basic foundations and workflows toward validating component value against business needs. A key outcome was building the Lemon8 Design System from the ground up
Used a design-driven workflow to validate component value and improve business outcomes
Improved collaboration workflows and sync mechanisms to increase design-team influence
Key points
Value
Team collaboration
Influence
Method
Yearly OKR - Quarterly OKR - Key Projects
AI Bot + Feedback
Design System changelog and team sync
Lemon8 Dark Mode
Optimized the dual-column transition on the detail page to reduce perceived latency, improve smoothness, and increase content consumption
[3] UG Growth
TikTok traffic acquisition focused on growing DNU and DRU, improving download conversion, and using in-app entry points to show Lemon8-specific content triggers that brought TikTok users into Lemon8 for posting, browsing, and engagement
FYP Card
TikTok main-feed cards surfaced Lemon8 content, relationship signals, and user benefits. We iterated from multi-content cards to single-content cards while continuously optimizing brand and content fields to increase open rate and DNU
TT Message
Displayed different Lemon8 message types in the TikTok message list, including follow posts, onboarding prompts, new followers, and post interactions. The intermediate page exposed relationship signals to improve click-through rate
