Yik Yak introduced rich media like photos, videos, gifs, and links to meet user demands for more expressive content, expecting it to enhance interactions.

Now that we had identity in Yik Yak, we were able to introduce a highly requested feature: in-app direct messaging. No more asking for users’ Kiks. Now we could facilitate these one-on-one conversations right in the app.

This was the big one. How were we going to bring identity to an app that was known mainly for anonymity? The better question is probably, why would we do that? This was the most interesting part of my time at Yik Yak and spans pretty much 90% of my time there.

We went through a lot of changes in the app and so did our content cards. In this post I’ll examine where the cards were when I entered the picture, where we left when it was all said and done, and some concepts I tinkered with on the side for funnies.

We had an internal need to create mocks of in-app content that would be distributed to external facing outlets (news sites, social media, etc.). Our initial setup relied heavily on the design staff, so I created a component library to empower anyone in the company to render these content mocks themselves. Here’s how it went.