Nearl - From followers to friends
Corteq Solutions Client Work: Designing the bridge between digital followers and real-world friendships — one proximity-aware prompt at a time.
Role
UX Designer, Researcher
Team
Product
Duration
14 weeks
End to End Design Process of Nearl
The Problem
More connected than ever. And lonelier.
500+ followers. Fewer than 5 real friendships. The shared interests are there, the proximity is there — what’s missing is the bridge to close the last mile.
Who I designed for
Three distinct archetypes emerged from our 24 interviews — each with different motivations and blockers around real-world connection.
User Flow
Information Architecture
Research Insights
What people actually said.
Pain Points
Outcomes: What it changed
4-week Wizard-of-Oz pilot, 40 participants, measured against diary study baseline.
What I learnt
The hardest design problem in Nearl wasn’t the proximity logic or the matching algorithm — it was the moment right before a user acts. Social anxiety lives in that gap between seeing someone nearby and doing something about it. Every feature I designed had to either shrink that gap or give the user a graceful exit.
The insight that changed the whole interaction model came from testing: users didn’t want to initiate — they wanted to feel invited. Shifting the framing from “send a wave” to “you’re both here” removed the burden of the first move entirely. That single reframe reduced drop-off at the connection step by more than anything else I tried.
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