Solo Project
Product Case Study
Mar 2025 - Present

A personal product built from scratch — turning user pain points into features, and features into a visual experience. DailyDrop helps users reflect, curate identity, and journal emotionally — without pressure or performance.

DailyDrop: Original Product Concept from Insight to Prototype

In recent years, I noticed a growing trend: people — especially young women — are using vision boards not just as planning tools, but as reflections of identity. A mood board for the year can influence how someone dresses, travels, decorates, and makes decisions. It’s less about productivity, and more about self-definition. Look good, feel good.

At the same time, current tools fall short:

  • Journaling apps are overly clinical or text-heavy

  • Social platforms feel loud, performative, and impersonal

Emerging UX trends (e.g., aesthetic quizzes, portfolio-style self-branding tools, and “who I am this week” moodboards) reveal a key insight:

Users want self-expression without the pressure to perform.

Not everyone wants to create content — but everyone wants to feel seen.

CONTEXT & INSPIRATION

college students and young creatives with high digital fluency, emotional depth, and a desire to express their identity — but without the performative expectations of traditional content platforms. They may love Pinterest, use Notion, and journal sporadically, but feel like no tool fully reflects them.

Gen Z

TARGET USER

There is no digital space today that allows users to privately reflect and express themselves visually — in a way that feels emotionally resonant, non-performative, and personalized.

This leaves users bouncing between:

  • Notion (structured but cold)

  • Pinterest (curated but impersonal)

  • Instagram (expressive but performative)

None support visual, emotional, private-yet-expressive identity curation. 

What’s missing is a middle space:

A calm, emotionally-intuitive environment where users can both privately reflect and visually express themselves — without pressure, without noise.

That’s where DailyDrop begins.

Journaling apps feel too rigid. Social platforms feel too loud.

THE GAP

  • Users can write freely and attach photos, which automatically sync to selected mood boards


  • All entries are private by default and are compiled into a personal scrapbook that can be exported as a PDF

Uncut

Vision

MAIN

: Personal photos only — unfiltered, authentic moments

: Boards built from inspiration across the app or web

: A signature board that reflects the user’s current aesthetic or emotional state

SOLUTION

Digital Scrapbook of the Soul:
Journaling needed emotion. Moodboards needed meaning.

Key Features & Rationale

Private Journaling

Mood Boards:

Core Product Principles:

Dual-mode Expression

Emotionally Intuitive

Creative, Non-Performative

Private journaling + optional visual boards

Designed to feel warm, soft, and pressure-free

Social features, no metrics — to connect, not compare

DailyDrop is a journaling and moodboard app that enables users to privately reflect and visually express themselves.

The product combines free-form writing with image curation, allowing users to create personal entries, build moodboards, and follow others — all without visible metrics. It's designed to support self-expression without performance pressure, helping users form habits around emotional reflection and identity-building.


Trend convergence across self-care, design tools, and identity curation:

Notion provides structure and customizability but lacks emotional warmth or visual spontaneity. 

Day One excels at private journaling but doesn't allow visual identity-building or lightweight creative sharing.

Pinterest offer moodboarding, they focus heavily on curated aesthetics and discovery, not emotional authenticity.

MARKET INSIGHT

Trends across wellness, design, and self-expression are converging. Apps like Day One and Stoic reflect the rise of emotional tracking, while Notion templates and bullet journaling show growing demand for aesthetic planning. Beyond creatives, more users are curating a “portfolio of self” — using digital spaces to express identity, not just productivity.

DailyDrop bridges this gap: it provides the emotional safety of a journaling app, the creative flexibility of a moodboard tool, and a subtle social layer — all without pressuring users to perform, impress, or quantify their expression.

RESEARCH FOUNDATION

Behavioral Insights That Shaped the Product

To inform DailyDrop’s design and product direction, I explored psychological and behavioral studies in expressive writing, identity curation, and interaction design:


  • Expressive journaling improves emotional well-being (Pennebaker & Smyth, 2007), especially when done in open-ended, non-clinical formats


  • Young users increasingly seek emotionally "soft" digital environments — ones that are low-pressure, highly visual, and safe from social metrics (The Information, 2023)


  • Users are more likely to adopt digital tools when visual cues, emotional tone, and onboarding match personal motivation, particularly for self-care and mood-based journaling (Lusebrink, 2012)


These findings directly shaped DailyDrop’s product principles — from mood-based UI and board tag options to the soft, non-performative structure of social engagement.

Gives structure without rigidity; users can express both who they are and who they want to be

  • Typography: minimal sans-serif with soft, poetic headers

  • Color palette: neutral base with mood-driven accents

  • Interactions: ripple effect, soft transitions

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From Logo to Language, We Set the Mood.

Our onboarding flow introduces the essence of DailyDrop through minimal design and emotional clarity. We greet users with our mission — "A digital scrapbook of the soul"—and guide them through how to start their journey

Your Feed, Curated by You.


The Home experience is divided into meaningful sections that keep the platform dynamic and relevant:


All:

  • A dynamic mosaic of creator boards

  • Each board includes a short vibe description + visual preview

  • Designed to spark inspiration and soft exploration

Stay Close to the Creators You Care About


Following:

  • See updates when creators add new content (disappears in 3 days)

  • Light, contextual notifications — no clutter, no noise

  • Creates a sense of movement and freshness in your feed


Favorites:

  • Saved images from any board, collected in one grid

  • Tap and hold for creator context or export options

  • Quiet curation for moments that matter

Your Story, Told in Visual Chapters.


This section is where self-expression takes form.


  • Scroll through all your personal boards, tagged by type.

  • Create new boards with intuitive tools and filters.

  • Tap into any board to edit, upload, or link photos seamlessly.


Whether you’re capturing an era ("Freshman Year") or curating a mood ("Everyday Slow Tempo"), this is where your life takes shape.

A Place for Thoughts That Don’t Fit Anywhere Else.


Journaling in DailyDrop is emotional, visual, and quietly powerful:


  • Entries auto-tag to your boards when linked.

  • Export options let you reflect (PDF, scrapbook view).

  • Full-screen writing mode removes distractions for deep reflection.

  • The Journal Menu helps you browse past seasons and manage your archives.


From snack memories to soul spills, the journal holds what can’t always be pinned to a moodboard.

Onboarding: A Soulful First Impression

Home: Explore and Discovery

Home: Following & Favorites

My Board: A Personal Archive of Seasons

Journal: Private, Honest, Yours

Design Rationale & Visual System

Figma Prototype Highlights

UI, UX, and Feature Flow

INTERFACE WALKTHROUGH

Activation
Rate

% of new users who create their first journal drop within 24 hours of onboarding.


Target: 50%+

Retention
Metrics

% of users journaling 3+ times per week after their first 7 days.

Benchmarked against apps like Stoic and Reflectly

Engagement
Metrics

  • Average # of boards created per user


  • Daily journaling streaks (7-day active rate)

Qualitative
Feedback

  • "This feels like my space."

  • "I’m journaling more because it’s visual."

  • "It helps me reflect without overthinking."

PRODUCT METRICS & SUCCESS MEASURES

To evaluate the success of DailyDrop's MVP, I defined key performance indicators across user behavior, engagement, and sentiment:

These metrics focus not just on raw usage, but on whether users feel emotionally safe, creatively free, and connected to their personal identity.

Measuring Success

IMPACT POTENTIAL

DailyDrop has the potential to create both personal and platform-level value:


  • Emotional Habit Formation: Encourages consistent journaling through lightweight, visual prompts and soft reminders — lowering the barrier to daily self-reflection.


  • Creative Identity Building: Allows users to curate moodboards as evolving identity pieces, positioning DailyDrop as a tool for self-discovery, not just note-taking.


  • Quiet Social Layer: Introduces follow/favorite mechanics without metrics, enabling subtle community engagement while preserving a judgment-free space.


  • Scalable Ecosystem Potential:

    • AI mood tagging or auto-tagging suggestions based on image uploads or journal tone

    • Exportable PDF scrapbooks — monetizable through customization options or print partnerships

    • Collaborations with wellness brands or journaling products (e.g., seasonal themes, physical kits)

Unlocking Value: From Emotion to Ecosystem

NEXT STEPS !

TAKEAWAY

DailyDrop began as a feeling — not a feature.

This project taught me that good product thinking is about more than features or interfaces — it's about creating space for feelings, reflection, and identity. Some of the most meaningful solutions don't solve productivity problems — they support emotional presence.

In building DailyDrop, I saw how a product can reflect a worldview: that people need safe, beautiful, low-pressure spaces to understand themselves. And that quiet expression can be just as powerful as public performance.

  • Currently building onboarding flow in React

  • Developing first journal + board interactions for web MVP

  • Testing mood-tag logic with pilot users

Would love to partner with designers, engineers, or PMs interested in building calm tech for emotional wellness.

It taught me that good product thinking is about holding space for emotional need, not just solving functional pain points. Some of the most meaningful user problems aren’t about doing more — they’re about feeling understood.

And that’s what this product is about.

Front-end Launch in Progress !

HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE GALLERY

A complete walkthrough of DailyDrop’s core flows — from onboarding and journaling to board creation and user discovery.

These screens highlight how the product brings emotional clarity, aesthetic curation, and seamless interaction together in one unified experience.

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DailyDrop

A digital scrapbook of the soul

Original Product Concept from Insight to Prototype