Before / comment thread
Text-only comment threads where real discussion happens.
Jeju travel tips
Shanghai bakery recommendations
The starting point
rednote was built on a simple promise: real people sharing real lives. By mid-2024, our consumer teams were focused on a shared question: how could consumption lead to more creation?
At the time, I worked across two product teams, designing both the post-detail experience and comments. We were exploring this question in both places. Our post-detail work largely focused on moving people into the existing publishing flow, while the comment section offered a lower-friction way to contribute without leaving the consumption experience.
Before / composer
Text-only composer.
By then, comments had become rednote's second-largest source of UGC. People were already using text-only threads to exchange travel advice, compare products, and share what actually worked.
Yet the experience was still text-only. The challenge was how to expand it without killing what made it good.
The evolution at a glance
Five moves over 1.5 years. Each one taught us something the previous one couldn't.
STEP 5
Cross-business
After validating these patterns in comments, I defined a reusable input framework and led its cross-team adoption in DMs and group chats. I then owned cross-surface Design QA to keep future reuse consistent.
More tools composer
Inline emoji
Voice composer
Lowering the barrier to expression
Image comments weren't a new idea — most social platforms already had them. But when we looked closely, the pattern was consistent: low-effort memes, reaction images, noise. The feature existed everywhere, but it made the conversations worse.
To avoid that pattern, the first version supported a single image only. The goal was to see how people used it before expanding the format. To protect the quality of image comments, I made two design decisions:
Album over camera
The design de-emphasized the live camera entry point, nudging people toward photos they had already curated. A considered pick from your library is almost always better than a snap taken in the moment.
Restrained image size
Image comments display at a size that complements the text around them, not dominates it. The comment section stays a conversation, not a photo dump.
What the community did with it amazed us.
Tap the post to open it, then scroll through the comments.
"Show us your monstera"
A plant post turned into a community gallery — people documenting growth, care routines, and small victories in the comments.
"Share this moment's light"
A simple prompt became a live gallery of skies, windows, streets, and golden-hour scenes from wherever people were.
"What to wear in Jeju"
A packing question became a real-time style exchange — outfit photos, weather notes, sunburn warnings, and all.
"Submit your editing homework"
A photo editing tutorial sparked a submission thread — creators teaching, community practicing, all in the comments.
These weren't use cases we designed for. They emerged because we gave the community a tool with enough structure to keep quality up, and enough room to surprise us.
When more became worse
Single image proved the concept. In the A/B test, comments per DAU increased 5.03%, with a 3.03% lift in the viewer-to-commenter rate and a 2.03% lift in comments per commenter.
Users started asking for more — so we gave them multi-image. And then publishing dropped.
Before
What the data told us
We had launched multi-image with default multi-select in the photo picker, assuming more choice would mean more posts. But only 10% of people who posted an image comment used more than one image. The added steps didn't bring in new commenters; instead, daily commenters fell 0.6%.
After
The fix
I flipped the default to single-select, kept multi-select available on demand, and added an entry point in the composer so the option remained easy to find. In the follow-up A/B test, the decline in daily commenters disappeared, while the number of images published increased 9.07%.
The lesson wasn't that multi-image was wrong. It was that the default is the product — most users never change it, so whatever you ship as default is what you've actually decided to build.
Widening the forms of expression
Images gave people something to show. But not everything worth sharing can be photographed. A singing voice, a regional accent, a burst of laughter. The question was how to bring voice into a community that valued depth over noise, and quality over volume.
Voice is inherently interruptive. How do we make it feel like an enrichment — not a disruption?
That led us to one foundational decision. Voice comments had to work in silent mode first.
Default voice-to-text
Unlike most platforms, we display the transcript by default so users can understand a voice comment in silent mode before deciding whether to listen.
AI-powered voice personality tags
When a voice comment has a distinctive quality, we surface a personality tag — instrument, dialect, vocal quality, or mood. The tag isn't just a label; it's a reason to listen. It makes you curious before you've heard a single note.
A waveform that's actually yours
Designing for the comment viewers was only half the problem. For the person recording, we wanted the act of posting a voice comment to feel just as considered.
Instead of a generic animation, we generate each waveform from the actual audio: width reflects duration, height reflects volume, rhythm reflects the speaker's natural cadence. A whisper looks different from a shout. A song looks different from a sentence.
When the community surprised us
Users didn't just use voice comments to reply. They started singing.
Someone posted a lyric as a voice comment. Others replied — singing the next line. Then someone else continued. The chain grew. What started as a comment format evolved into a community ritual that spread across the platform.
We saw it happening and made it official by turning the behavior into a dedicated singing relay feature. The feature grew directly from what the community was already doing.
By December 2025, six months after launch, 5M+ users had posted at least one voice comment, for a total of 50M+ voice comments and 1B+ plays. Daily voice comment volume had reached 1.5M and has continued to grow since.
Impact
The work didn't stay in the comment section. Inline emoji, voice, and the shared keyboard were later adopted in DMs and group chats, creating consistent interactions across comments and messaging.
From May 2024 to Dec 2025, comment activity grew.
Reflection
This project changed how I look for product direction. I learned to pay as much attention to the behaviors people create together as to the features they ask for.
Designing for a community goes beyond individual needs. Communities have instincts of their own.
Comments — from text to ecosystem
Over 1.5 years, I led the expansion of rednote's text-only comment experience to include images, stickers, and voice. What began in comments later shaped expression across the broader product ecosystem.