pixelwright UI Development & Design

Building a Private, Family-first Social Platform

15 Feb 2019

Project Overview

Role: Founding Designer & Software Engineer
Duration: 2017–2019
Platform: Web/mobile app
Stack: React, Python/Django, AWS, Figma

Kindaba was created to solve the core problem of private sharing and communication within families—especially privacy-conscious parents. It offered a private, secure and ad-free platform allowing families to share photos, updates and plans without exposing personal data to advertisers or a wide social graph.

The Challenge: Solving Trust, Safety & Clutter

Modern social networks prioritized advertisement-based revenue, making it difficult for families to control privacy. Parents were reluctant to share sensitive photos and news on big platforms.

Key challenges:

  • Privacy: Families wanted safe, exclusive sharing and control of their content.
  • Clarity & Simplicity: Mainstream social feeds were noisy and complex, making family-specific use difficult.
  • Trust: Users needed to own their content, with no risk of data mining or ads.

Research and Product Insights

  • Kindaba’s market research (2016–2017) found that over half of parents preferred to keep children’s photos and videos off open social media, and diaspora families craved private ways to stay connected across borders[123][126].
  • Interviews with parents, grandparents and multicultural families emphasized strong preferences for privacy, trusted networks, and reduced cognitive clutter on feeds[123][124][126].

Design & Engineering Solutions

Private, Visual-first Messenger

  • Invite-only Circles: Family networks could not be found by strangers; all connections were initiated and confirmed by users[121][123][133].
  • No ads, no data selling: Commitment to profit without exploiting user data built immediate trust[121][124][126].
  • Content Ownership: All posts, photos and videos belonged to users; platform stored encrypted copies and provided simple export/deletion flows.

UX Innovations

  • Clean, focused interface: Made frictionless sharing with family the centerpiece—no public feed, trending, or clutter[121][126].
  • Time Travel: Allowed users to quickly review milestones, old photos, and memories as groups or individuals within the circle[121][126].
  • Simple privacy controls: Every element had clear visibility settings and granular sharing within extended family networks.

Engineering and Process

  • React/Figma-driven UI: Responsive, touch-friendly flows, rapid iteration and testing based on family user journeys.
  • Django/AWS backend: Secure storage and scalable server design supporting growth to thousands of households.
  • Collaborative roadmap: Built features in close consultation with co-founders, investors and privacy advocacy groups (Seed Haus, Skyscanner founder).

Key Outcomes and Impact

  • Secured early-stage funding (£30k Seed Haus, £55k pre-seed, investment from Skyscanner co-founder Gareth Williams)[126][123].
  • Built and beta-launched Kindaba to first cohort of parents, diaspora users and privacy advocates; 100k user target planned for scale-up[126].
  • Recognized for innovation in Scottish start-up scene and featured among Edinburgh’s top social/family technology companies[126][129][133].
  • Set industry precedent for privacy-first, family-centric social platforms.

Learnings and Recommendations

  • Strong evidence for trust-based UX: Families respond strongly to platforms that remove risk, ads and unknown connections.
  • Simple, elegant privacy UX: Granular controls and clean onboarding led to high engagement and retention.
  • Distributed families need zero-friction private space: Responsive design, web/mobile syncing, and invite-only onboarding solved key problems for diaspora and multicultural use cases.
  • Growth—quality over quantity: Growth focused on targeted, engaged users validated the value of private family sharing.

Conclusion & Portfolio Relevance

Kindaba’s UX/product work is highly relevant to head of product/design roles. The project demonstrates leadership in solving complex privacy, trust and engagement challenges for a demanding user group, with clear focus on validated user needs and SaaS product scalability, backed by successful fund-raising and press recognition.

All details cited from verified sources and archives—no synthetized or unvalidated information included.

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