eladde App
A Real-World Social Connections App
eladde is a location-based social app designed to help people connect in real life whether they’re at an airport, café, hotel, restaurant, lounge, or coworking space. It shows users nearby with similar interests or professional experience, allowing them to:
Discover people around them
Connect via in-app meetup requests
Meet and chat in real life
This app is valuable for business travelers, founders, creatives, remote workers, and digital nomads looking for meaningful in-person connections.
The Problem
Despite the rise of online social networks, many users still struggle to turn digital interactions into real-world connections. Key user challenges included:
Difficulty finding nearby people with shared goals or interests
Users wasting time on broad, irrelevant feeds
Weak clarity around profile verification and safety
Confusion navigating real-time meetup suggestions
From a product standpoint, the business wanted:
Increased daily active users
Higher successful meetup rates
Better trust signals to encourage real engagements
The challenge: turn physical spaces into connection opportunities instead of just another social feed.
Constraints
The project required careful management of:
Location permissions and privacy concerns
Real-time proximity data accuracy
Trust and safety (verified profiles, privacy controls)
Meeting facilitation without forcing commitment
Delivering a lightweight mobile experience without drain or overload
These constraints meant design decisions had to balance guidance and user confidence without overwhelming new users.
My Approach
1) Simplify Discovery for Relevance
Main goal:
Reduce noise. Show people who matter now.
Rather than a broad follower model, we:
Designed a locally filtered discovery feed based on interests and proximity
Emphasized professional interests and shared goals
This reduced cognitive load and improved relevance.
2) Strengthen Trust & Safety
Trust is fundamental for in-person meetups. To support this:
Verified profiles through LinkedIn and Google
Clear real-time status indicators (online / nearby / available)
Private control over visibility and meetup requests
These design patterns increased perceived trust and made users more comfortable engaging.
3) Streamline Connection Flow
Original flow had unclear transition points between discovery, connecting, and meeting.
We optimized key interaction paths:
Before optimization:
Multiple taps to view profile details
Separate screens for interests, actions, and location summary
After optimization:
Consolidated profile header with interest tags and proximity
One-tap meetup initiation
Progress feedback from request sent → accepted → location confirmation
This reduced friction and clarified user expectations.
Trade-offs
In every decision there were trade-offs:
Trust vs Speed
Strong verification increases confidence, but adds friction during onboarding.
Solution: progressive verification (optional but recommended).
Privacy vs Discovery
Some users feared sharing location.
Solution: clear affordances to toggle visibility and fuzzy location display.
Feature Richness vs Simplicity
Too many social features can overwhelm.
Solution: focus on core in-person connection functionality first, leaving secondary features for later phases.
Impact
"Designed core connection flows resulting in measurable increases in engagement and confidence signals across key user journeys."
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