case study
AKASHA World.
AKASHA Foundation · Lead Product Designer
what is it
A social platform you own.
AKASHA World is an open-source decentralized social platform where users fully own and control their content. The platform is built around a composable architecture: each feature is a standalone app (a micro-frontend) that users can install, remove, or rearrange. These apps are independent but designed to work together. Any combination of them can form a "World," a fully customized social environment that a community or individual assembles to fit their needs.
I was Lead Product Designer across all of them, from day-to-day interaction design to the shared design system that held everything together.
the 8 apps
Designed end-to-end.
Every app in AKASHA World is a self-contained product that can be installed independently. A community might use just Antenna and Profile for a simple social feed, or combine all eight into a full-featured platform. Each app was designed by me: the flows, the information architecture, the interaction patterns, and the edge cases.
Antenna
The home feed. A chronological stream of Beams and Reflections from across a World. I designed the feed layout, beam composer, image and text block system, topic-based filtering, and the NSFW content toggle, balancing discoverability with user-controlled safety.
Beam Editor
The publishing interface. Users create Beams using a block-based editor with text, images, and DApps. I designed the block creation flow, the publishing process, and the content block extension API that allows third-party blocks to be added.
Reflections
The response layer. Reflections are threaded replies to Beams; Reflects are replies to Reflections. I designed the threading model, the nested view, and the interaction patterns that distinguish Reflecting from reacting.
Profile
Identity and presence. User profiles with published Beams, following and followers, and decentralized identity indicators. I designed the profile pages, the follow system, and the Mini Profile widget that surfaces contextually throughout the platform.
Extensions
The app marketplace. Users browse, install, activate, and deactivate apps and widgets, built by AKASHA or by the community. I designed the discovery experience, the extension card system, and the install and manage flows.
Vibes
Community moderation. Users can flag content; moderators review flagged items and maintain a public Transparency Log. I designed the reporting flow, the moderator review interface, and the full Vibes Console.
Search
Cross-app search. I designed the search experience across Beams, Profiles, and Tags, with results that respect the decentralized data model and surface content from across a user’s installed World.
Settings
User control center. Theme, NSFW preferences, connected accounts, and notification controls. Designed as a low-friction, predictable space where power users feel in control without overwhelming casual ones.
Auth, the front door for two very different users
The authentication app had to onboard crypto natives and non-crypto natives through the same door. Crypto natives expect to connect a wallet in seconds; newcomers see "connect wallet" and leave. I designed a dual-persona onboarding flow with plain-language explanations, progressive steps, and recovery paths, then ran moderated usability tests with non-crypto-native participants specifically on the wallet-connection step. Each round fed iterations that cut connection drop-off round over round, turning the platform's scariest moment into its smoothest.
the hard problems
Where it got interesting.
Consistency without a central dictator
8 composable apps needed to feel like one product, even when assembled in different combinations across different Worlds. The design system was the solution: shared tokens and patterns that enforced coherence without requiring every decision to be centralized.
Making decentralization legible
Content ownership in Web3 is a backend concept. Users needed to understand where their data lives and what "you own this" actually means in practice, without a lecture. Every trust signal was a design decision.
Cross-app flows that feel seamless
A user might click a profile in Antenna, install an extension from Extensions, then report content via Vibes, without knowing they have changed "apps." Interaction patterns had to be consistent enough that the seams were invisible.
Moderation in a decentralized system
Vibes had to solve a genuinely novel problem: how do you moderate a platform that can't remove content at the infrastructure level? The answer was community-driven moderation with a fully public Transparency Log. Accountability by design.
design system
Built on Shadcn.
To prevent the ecosystem from fragmenting as apps evolved independently, I built the AKASHA World Design System on top of Shadcn UI: composable, unopinionated components that developers already trusted. Because the entire project is open source and apps can be assembled into any World configuration, the system had to work across unpredictable combinations. It covered tokens, shared component patterns, and interaction specs. It is what allowed 8 different composable apps to look and feel like one product, no matter how a community chose to assemble them. More detail on the system itself is in the AKASHA UI case study.
process
Embedded in engineering.
Ecosystem-level UX mapping
Mapped every cross-app user journey to identify where patterns needed to align and where apps could legitimately diverge. This was the foundation for the design system's scope.
Design alongside implementation
No big-bang handoffs. Designs were iterated alongside engineering sprints, with UX decisions validated against decentralized data model constraints in real time.
Weekly design reviews
Ran cross-team design reviews to catch inconsistencies early and maintain shared understanding of the UX principles across app teams.
Live Figma component library
Maintained a shared Figma workspace used by all teams, kept in sync with the code implementation so design and engineering stayed aligned.
impact
Engagement figure is an internal estimate, labeled as such. Wallet-connection drop-off improved across consecutive moderated test rounds.
outcomes
What shipped.
8 apps shipped end-to-end
Antenna, Beam Editor, Reflections, Profile, Extensions, Vibes and Vibes Console, Search, Settings, and Auth. All designed from first sketch to production.
Coherent composable ecosystem
8 independent, composable apps that feel like one product. Users move between them without noticing the architectural seams.
Novel moderation model
Vibes introduced community-driven moderation with a public Transparency Log, a new approach to content governance that does not require centralized infrastructure control.
Open-source design foundation
The entire platform and design system are open source. New apps can be added to any World without renegotiating base patterns.