Japan Dtto App (UE)

Industry

Social Media

Duration

6 Weeks

Company

Dcard

Company

Dcard

Team

1 UXD, 3 DEV, 1 PM

Team

1 UXD, 3 DEV, 1 PM

Business Challenge:
Building Engagement from 0 in a New Market

Dtto launched as the Japanese version of Dcard, but unlike Dcard’s growth in Taiwan, Dtto entered Japan with no existing content, community, or network effects. Early user activity was low, and limited engagement made it difficult for new users to feel motivated or safe enough to participate. Without meaningful interaction, growth stalled, reinforcing the cold-start problem.

Dtto launched as the Japanese version of Dcard, but unlike Dcard’s growth in Taiwan, Dtto entered Japan with no existing content, community, or network effects. Early user activity was low, and limited engagement made it difficult for new users to feel motivated or safe enough to participate. Without meaningful interaction, growth stalled, reinforcing the cold-start problem.

Focus Group Research:
Understanding Why Users Don’t Engage

Instead of jumping into feature ideas, we focused on understanding what actually prevents users from participating. By synthesizing existing qualitative research and focus group insights, we examined how users experience the platform before, during, and after engaging with content. This helped us identify not just surface-level usability issues, but the emotional and cognitive costs users face when deciding whether to comment, respond, or share.

Design Direction:
Lower Pressure, Higher Motivation

Our findings showed that engagement wasn’t blocked by lack of functionality, but by:

  • Fear of negative or hostile responses

  • Low motivation caused by repetitive content

  • The effort required to read and process long discussions

Rather than pushing users to post more, we reframed the goal as making participation feel lighter, safer, and more rewarding, especially for first-time and low-confidence users.

Design Strategy:
Localized Engagement for the Japanese Context

While Taiwan and Japan differ culturally, core user needs—emotional safety, motivation, and efficiency—were consistent. Using these shared needs as a foundation, we adapted solutions to Japanese social norms and content consumption habits, prioritizing subtle prompts, low-exposure interactions, and efficient information scanning. Given limited resources and uncertainty around long-term investment, all concepts were evaluated using an impact–effort matrix to ensure feasibility.

What We Delivered

Lightweight Concepts to Drive Engagement

Unlock with Votes：A low-effort interaction that uses personality-style prompts (popular in Japan) to spark curiosity. Users can only view others’ responses after submitting their own, increasing participation while minimizing social exposure. Q&A Wall：A new surface that highlights questions and contributors without immediately revealing full replies. This improves reading efficiency, encourages recognition-driven participation, and allows users to engage with minimal effort. Weekly Mood：An exploratory, anonymous feature that allows users to share emotions without reply pressure. A weekly mood map visualizes collective sentiment, creating a sense of shared presence and encouraging repeat engagement over time.