In a digital world optimized for reach, feeds, and algorithmic noise, LOCL took a quieter stance: community works best when it is local, governed, and intentional.
LOCL is a location-constrained community platform, live on mobile app stores, designed for iOS, Android, and responsive web. A browser experience is in progress to reduce “download-first” friction.
I served as the Senior UX/UI Designer from early system definition through ongoing iteration-owning architecture, interaction design, governance UX, and cross-platform parity clarity.
Senior UX/UI Designer (end-to-end)
System architecture · UX/UI design systems · Discovery and taxonomy · Governance and moderation UX · Privacy and safety patterns · Cross-platform parity · Interaction design
Flutter (cross-platform) for iOS, Android, and web
Live on app stores · Browser in progress
LOCL
Apr 2024 – Present
Most social products are designed to expand. More reach, more content, more noise. LOCL took a quieter stance. Community works best when it stays local, has clear stewardship, and feels intentional to return to.
We built LOCL as a location constrained community system that supports real participation, not engagement loops. The goal was not to keep people scrolling. The goal was to help people find what matters where they actually live, then give leaders the tools to keep that space healthy.
Intro video: the problem with modern feeds, and LOCL’s local-first answer.
Product structure and key navigation patterns, including the split between Discover and Joined
Core community surfaces: feed, about, members, affiliates, and posting behaviors
Governance and trust flows: roles, join requests, moderation, reporting, and leader tooling
Cross-platform behavior clarity: component states and edge cases across iOS, Android, and web
Design-to-build artifacts that reduced ambiguity for engineering and prevented drift
Discover · Joined · Community · Governance · Profile · Connections
Community products rarely fail because of UI. They fail when the system breaks under real human behavior.
Local relevance disappears when global mechanics dominate attention.
Browsing and returning are different behaviors. The product had to respect both.
Communities grow fast, but they stay healthy only when leadership and moderation scale with them.
Removing friction drives growth. The right friction protects trust.
These tensions shaped the system. Everything you see next is a response to them.
Instead of starting with generic UX patterns, we treated LOCL’s principles like product requirements. Each one is a constraint that narrows decisions and prevents drift. The screens below show how those constraints show up in real surfaces.
Discovery stays local by design. It prioritizes proximity and relevance, not virality.
Discover · Tags · Boundaries · Location
Hierarchy and pacing are designed to feel unhurried. You can use it without being pulled.
Home feed · Community feed · Post flow · Direct messages
Empty states teach behavior instead of apologizing for missing content.
Home empty feed · Joined communities empty · Community empty feed · Messages empty
Leaders, moderators, and reporting are foundational, not a settings afterthought.
Manage hub · Reports · Join requests · Roles + visibility
Flutter enabled shared patterns, but not identical behavior. Design respected platform norms while staying consistent.
iOS (Home) · Android (Home) · Android Tablet (Joined) · Desktop Web (Home + Post)
We started with patterns, not assumptions. We looked at where community platforms break, then designed around those weak spots.
Across Nextdoor, Facebook Groups, Meetup, and Discord, the same cracks show up:
Feeds turn communities into noise
Local relevance collapses under global behavior
Moderation arrives too late, after trust is already damaged
Discovery and onboarding don’t match how people join communities in real life
In early conversations with community leaders and active members, the same needs came up:
“Who is this for?” must be clear before joining
Leaders need control that feels dignified, not punitive
Trust is built through clarity: rules, roles, visible leadership, predictable behavior
Communities do better when creation is guided, not unlimited
When people care, they want a space designed with dignity.
Real community example · Feed context · About
LOCL is structured around two modes: Discover to explore, Joined to return to your communities, stay updated, and build.
Discover is for exploration. Joined is for commitment.
Two psychological modes: Discover for exploration, Joined for commitment sharing the same core community structure, with mode specific actions
Same community, different state: Discover shows Join Community, Joined opens to Feed
LOCL keeps discovery focused and easy to refine.
Search is scoped to communities
Tags are guided with suggested chips instead of endless categories
Discovery stays location-bound
Filters preserve context via a sheet/modal instead of page jumps
Scoped discovery: explore communities, then refine with guided tags and filters
Creation is structured so communities start with clarity, not confusion:
Define the basics: name, headline, about, and domain
Anchor it locally: location and visibility
Make it findable: guided tags that shape discovery
Set stewardship early: leaders and moderators from day one
Launch with guardrails: required fields prevent unclear communities
Start momentum: invite people immediately after launch
Structured creation: define identity, anchor locally, set visibility, assign stewardship, then invite people to start momentum.
Communities are designed like rooms, with dedicated spaces for updates, context, people, media, and affiliated communities, with topic channels for focused discussions coming soon.
Feed: the shared notice board for updates and conversation
About: mission, location, and leadership, visible up front for trust
Media: a shared library for photos and videos, not buried in the feed
Members: clear roles and participation context, who is here and why
Affiliates: partner communities, connection without turning it into a global graph
A community is organized into five dedicated spaces: Feed for updates, About for context, Media as a shared library, Members for people and roles, and Affiliates for related communities.
Identity supports belonging. Profiles show context, not performance.
Activity: a running log of your posts and shared updates across every community you participate in
About: lightweight identity and self expression your bio plus optional links, media, and socials you choose to share
Communities: where your joined and created communities live with controls to show them publicly or keep them private
Connections: a local first network where connecting is intentional not follower based
Profile as context: activity across communities, curated links, community presence, and intentional local connections
These core surfaces work together to help people find what matters, connect intentionally, and stay up to date on the communities they’re part of. Each area is scoped by intent with clear actions and consistent patterns, so the experience stays local, calm, and easy to return to.
Search: spans people and communities, locals first with scoped filters
Connections: My Connections / Find People, designed for real relationships over follower counts
Notifications: grouped by intent (Reactions / Requests / Replies) so actions are quick and obvious
Messages: 1:1 and small-group threads with reactions, replies, edits, media, link previews, and sharing
Context stays local: location and purpose shape what you see
Consistent patterns: tabs, filters, and action buttons behave the same across surfaces
Supporting navigation: search, connections, notifications, and messages
Flutter enables cross-platform parity, but it raises the bar for precision. Consistency doesn’t come from polished UI, it comes from decisions engineers can implement the same way every time.
I partnered closely with engineering to reduce build risk and speed up delivery by producing build-ready specs, including:
Component behavior contracts (rules, reuse patterns, edge cases)
State coverage matrices (empty, loading, error, partial, success)
Parity guidelines (what must match across platforms vs intentional differences)
Interaction specs detailed enough to implement without interpretation
UI decisions shaped by constraints (performance, time cost, feasibility)
The intent was technical empathy: not to write code, but to eliminate ambiguity and reduce rework.
Before high-fidelity UI, I used low-fi wireframes to lock in LOCL’s information architecture, core flows, and edge cases. Below, you’ll see (1) a build-ready lo-fi set that clarifies structure and states, and (2) an organized iteration library where explorations and pivots are archived so decisions stay traceable and patterns can be reused.
Align structure early: validate navigation, hierarchy, and flow order before visual polish
Reduce build ambiguity: define interaction rules, empty/loading states, and guardrails upfront
Move faster with reuse: establish consistent patterns (tabs, lists, sheets, filters) across surfaces
Explore broadly, decide deliberately: test multiple approaches, then converge based on clarity and intent
Keep decisions traceable: archive explorations in an iteration library so the team can reference prior work without rework
Lo-fi wireframes: 12 curated screens selected from a larger exploration, capturing LOCL’s core MVP flows across discovery, joining, community navigation, posting, governance, creation, and profile, mapped to remove ambiguity and keep implementation buildable.
Iteration library: archived explorations and pivots, organized for traceability and reuse.
I use metrics to validate design intent, not to decorate the story.
In the first five weeks (Apr 4 to May 8, 2025), we saw clear momentum that validated the system direction:
Users: +225%
Installs: +221%
Communities created: +126%
Strongest growth came from unlisted and private communities, signaling demand for clearer governance and permissioning from day one
The fastest-growing community type was not public. It was unlisted and private. That reinforced an early bet that governance, join requests, and visibility controls are foundational, not “later.”
As of Jan 8, 2026, LOCL had reached:
2,456 users
509 communities
4,992 community members
3,474 posts
680 cities
53 countries
This matters because it is not just adoption, it is distribution. Even at MVP stage with a small team, the system had to stay coherent across cities, community types, and increasing levels of governance complexity.
Designing LOCL reinforced something I already suspected:
Community is not software, it is people. People need clarity to join. Safety to stay. Leadership to scale. And they need a product that does not hijack attention just to prove it is working.
LOCL is still early, with no marketing push yet. That has been a useful constraint. It forced the product to earn repeat use through structure, not hype, and validated that local-first systems can grow through real participation instead of endless browsing.
In a world chasing virality, LOCL is a chance to design for something slower and more meaningful: infrastructure that helps humans show up for each other, without noise.
Leader tooling that reduces platform risk and strengthens trust
Discovery systems that stay local-first without collapsing into directories
Events as a core surface for local communities to coordinate and build momentum
Community channels to support focused discussions beyond a single feed
A donation system to support individual communities and partner NGOs directly in the app
Cross-platform parity that preserves intent as the system scales
The writeup is still in progress, but LOCL is live. Visit locl.com for an overview, then download the app to see the full flow in context.
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