Snap Minis are a new experience on Snapchat - it allows users to open up a “bite-sized” HTML5 web app directly through the Snapchat experience with no installation required. It also allows users to have “collaborative experiences” directly in the mini-app (right now it’s mainly just chat and anything collaborative that can be done on HTML5).
The developer team at Terra (withterra.com) reached out to me to design their new in-app gifting concept aimed at gamifying the online gifting experience for a Gen-Z audience as things remain remote. Their goal was to offer a social gifting experience that teenagers can send to one another to express gratitude, and celebration. The experience they were seeking was lighthearted and designed to encourage active engagement.
My job was to design the branding concept and create the user experience that users would want to share and keep coming back to. I integrated the app concept into the pre-existing Snapchat environment using Figma.
As the sole designer for this project, I initially came up with 3 different branding concepts to best represent the app. The development team was seeking something that connected with their target demographic: young consumers, so I sought out bright colors and catchy names.
A major component of this designing process was to determine how users would use the in-app mini-app. In order to drive traffic to the app, I needed to add a social element to the concept, where users could share their friends sending each other gifts on their Snapchat stories, and also share freebies that would be published daily on the app.
After reviewing these concepts, the team decided on combining the concepts below, inspired by actual stickers and a catchy name, NikNak, to gameify the gifting experience.
