The opportunity
Give students a reason to return after the RSVP.
Events gave students a reason to join DoorList, but many treated the product transactionally: open an invitation, RSVP, disappear. Friends Activity explored how the network itself could become a reason to return.
- My role
- I owned the feature from early product definition through interaction and UI design.
- Core question
- Should users have to build a network before they can experience its value?
The pivotal decision
Gate the feed, or let the feed prove its own value?
A minimum-friend gate sounded like a clean growth mechanic. It also created a chicken-and-egg problem: users with the weakest networks had to invest before they could see why a network mattered.
“Show people the value of the network before asking them to build it.”
What changed
The open experience produced more friend additions than the gated variants.
The test window was limited, but the signal was strong enough to challenge the original assumption and move forward without the gate. Friends-of-friends activity could create curiosity without turning access into a demand.