Turtle · 2018–2019
Turtle was a chat app for high school and college students to meet their classmates. Conversations started anonymous and revealed both people after a few days, with hints and guess games in between. As its founding designer I designed everything from onboarding and profiles to the school networks that drove signups.
- Role
- As founding designer and design co-lead I owned the product’s design and direction, and the growth experiments around its launch.
- Outcome
- 10,000 people signed up in the first week. Turtle was #4 Product of the Day on Product Hunt and was covered by Business Insider.
- Product
- Turtle, social app for students
- Industry
- Consumer Social
- Year
- 2018–2019
Friends first, names later
- Turtle was a chat app that helped high school and college students start conversations with classmates without being judged.
- A friend and I started it as sophomores. I was the founding designer and co-led the product.
Temporary anonymity
- Conversations started anonymous. After a set number of days, both people were revealed.
- The countdown kept it playful while lowering the stakes that make anonymous apps go wrong.
Guess who
- Hints and guess games gave people something to talk about while they were still anonymous.
In within a minute
- Onboarding took a phone number, a code, a username, and a photo, one question per screen.
Built to spread
- Profiles came with one-tap sharing to Snapchat and a link of their own.
- Schools were the network: you found people through your high school or college.
Launch week
- Over 500 students around Virginia signed up for the beta. At launch we asked those groups to share it with their friends.
- 10,000 people signed up in the first week. Turtle was #4 Product of the Day on Product Hunt, Business Insider covered it, and investors and product leads reached out.