The Challenge
What PurpleX Was Facing
PurpleX aimed to differentiate on meaningful social connection, but early retention data showed users falling off after day three. Diary studies and weekly check-in interviews with 50 beta users over eight weeks revealed that the content discovery IA was surfacing volume over relevance — flooding new users with unfamiliar content before they had established any interest signals.
The Solution
What We Built
We redesigned the onboarding IA around an explicit interest-capture phase, supported by a progressive profiling model that used early interactions as implicit signals. Content discovery was restructured with a ranked relevance layer, and the notification architecture was redesigned to prompt engagement at contextually appropriate moments rather than on a fixed schedule.
Results