Lead game and product designer on Mochi

Mochi was a kpop social platform and dance game for mobile with a vibrant community. I led the design of Mochi from concept through to launch and live-ops and explored the cutting edge of designing for friendships in multiplayer environments.

I developed Mochi during my two years at LoveShark, joining the start-up when we were only a team of 5 until it sadly closed with a team of 18.

Learn k-pop dances

Pick from a large library of hundreds of k-pop dances.

Realtime feedback

Our AI model detects your movements and compares it to the original so you always know how well you're dancing.

A kind community

Post your dances to a kind community of k-pop stans and make friends.

behind the scenes +

Leadership

As lead I was in charge of cross-department communication to ensure smooth implementation and quality execution of the designs. Clear documentation, compelling pitching and leading inclusive ideation workshops was my day to day. I also ran one to ones with direct reports to foster an effective but also kind environment that brings out the best in teams.

Iterative development

I worked closely with our data analyst to turn player insights into actionable improvements, partnering with the CEO, CTO and producer to work them into our roadmap.

Where opportunities for collaboration arose, I ran design sprints that brought the whole team into the ideation process. We’d share ideas and pitch solutions together.

After each sprint, the CEO and I would review the strongest options and decide on a best path forward.

It was an incredibly collaborative team and these sessions became a highlight of our process.

Social design

Mochi was more than just a game or an app, it was a community. The features needed to both retain users and foster a kind environment, where players could go from being strangers to becoming best friends.

I developed and iterated on a system of features that fostered friendships. Among many things, this was achieved by tying together gameplay progression systems with our users' friendship journeys. A pioneering design at the time.

I went on to publish this concept at the Polaris Game Design Retreat for other designers to use.

Early prototyping

This is a very early prototype of Mochi. One month into working at LoveShark, I researched what UX flow would work best to balance learning dances while having fun doing so. I designed a flow and together with a Unity engineer we prototyped and tested this build. It became the core gameplay loop of Mochi.