OtterLoon
TL;DR
OtterLoon is a professional networking platform with humanistic, customizable profiles. The goal was to be a more authentic alternative to LinkedIn, where connections are curiosity-driven, not transactional. This case study examines the blunt challenges of navigating a startup environment.
The Problem & Ideology
Professional networking is driven by optics and idealism, not connection.
As a result:
Profiles are overly curated, romanticized, and inauthentic.
Professionals rarely respond to outreach messages.
People only network when they want something.
We wanted to build the anti-LinkedIn, and didn't want to end up soulless. Our one core rule:
No feature would exist unless it directly supported intentional, meaningful connection.
A Tricky UX Research Issue
Good design is validated through research. But what happens when months of it gets wiped?
One thing survived: our team's groupchat. So I treated our conversations like artifacts.
The closest thing to the raw research, is how we processed it and made decisions from it.
(1) Resume / Portfolio Profile
Our goal was to let people present themselves in a way that feels human, real, and useful.
Meaning, ditching any standardization in the profile page and letting users tell their own story. We ideated the following modules:
Resume elements: work experiences, education, projects, certifications, & more.
Portfolio elements: file uploads, links, & image galleries to create case studies.
Prompts: open answers to questions about professional journey, inspired by Hinge.
Contact Card: connections can flourish into the real world after anonymous matching.
"Most candidates we interviewed really like the premise of OtterLoon for the ability to express themselves beyond the resume and through prompts."
Prompts, specifically, laid the groundwork for the creation of unique profiles that are actually worth users' time to read.
(2) Job Search & Gamification
Our original assumption is that we needed both job search & networking in a successful MVP.
We planned to reinvent job search with cognitive metrics that give insight into how people think, and orchestrate ideal culture fits.
How? Specially designed daily minigames that weren't just fun, but actually served a purpose.
“If users can’t trust the games, we can’t launch with them.”
"Most candidates we interviewed really like the premise of OtterLoon for the ability to express themselves beyond the resume and through prompts."
"Our interviews show college students will only play if it helped them get jobs, otherwise it's wasting their time."
“Transparency helps candidates, but hurts trust with recruiters. That trade-off destroys the value prop.”
Games & metrics were crucial to differentiating ourselves in job search. We were at an impasse.
We decided to move job search to our R&D backlog to focus the MVP on connection through networking, not evaluation through games.
(3) Intentional Discovery
Now, every design decision was about improving the interactions causing authentic networking.
We reframed our language. On LinkedIn, "connections" are an arbitrary friends count. On OtterLoon, we were facilitating "matches."
We iterated the following interactions:
Heart-Drag: leverage the modularity for people to like specific profile elements.
Swipe Elaborations: prompting emphasizing why or why not for matching kickstarts conversations and gathers app feedback.
See Who Likes You: a detailed means of responding to match outreach.
"One tester said 'testing these interactions, I understood the person behind the profile better than any LinkedIn profile today. I want people to see my profile that way.'"
High-Fidelity MVP
After months of pivots, stripped-back scope, and design debates, we approached a final MVP that captures the essence of OtterLoon:
A human-first platform for authentic, intentional professional connection.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, OtterLoon was always about cultivating an atomic network of genuinely curious professionals.
We ultimately didn't launch due to lack of resources, and the CEO wanting to go in another direction. Nonetheless, I’m proud of what we proved:
The future of networking doesn’t need to feel like networking.