Product case study
Making it easier for new users to find their people.
I explored where Discord’s onboarding creates friction for new users, researched the problem, and designed a friend-discovery concept around contact syncing and search.
A survey of 52 respondents and follow-up interviews explored awareness, usage, and where new users struggle.
Many people associate Discord primarily with gaming, so those outside the gaming community are less likely to have heard of it or considered using it.
New users found it difficult to add or find friends. There's no easy way to search by email, phone number, or synced contacts.
The interface felt unfamiliar and more complicated compared with other social media platforms respondents already used.
Users were largely unaware of Discord Discover, the feature meant to help them find relevant public servers.
Harsh Bandhe · 18 · First-year engineering student
Harsh plays online multiplayer games and wants an easy way to keep playing with friends who are now in different cities.
What he needsAn easy way to stay connected with friends and keep playing together, without lag or extra cost.
No blocking pain point noted at this stage.
Five directions were compared by business value and implementation complexity. Friend discovery emerged as the chosen direction.
Step-by-step guidance on basic navigation, plus guided tours to join public servers.
Search by email or phone number, sync contacts, show which friends are already on Discord and which servers they're in.
Explain vocabulary like “server” and “channel” that new users don't yet know.
Surface the feature in the mobile app, add refined search filters, ask for preferred topics.
Let users choose between an interface similar to common social apps, or the current power-user interface.
Business value ↑ · Implementation complexity →
No candidates
Chosen solution
Enable new users to quickly find and connect with friends through contact syncing and search by email or phone number.
Interactive prototype
A 9-step concept showing how new users can discover ways to invite friends, sync contacts, search directly and share invite links.
1 / 9
Step 01
After creating or joining a server, the onboarding checklist highlights “Invite your friends” as the first action.
Step 02
Tapping through opens a modal to sync mail contacts, generate a shareable invite link, or skip, plus a list of public servers to explore.
Step 03
Choosing to sync shows a loading state while Discord matches the signed-up email against the user's contacts.
Step 04
The same modal also offers syncing contacts from the phonebook, or skipping straight to search.
Step 05
A matching loading state appears while phone contacts sync.
Step 06
Users can also type an email or phone number directly to search for a specific friend.
Step 07
A dropdown of matching contacts lets the user pick who to invite, drawn from the synced list.
Step 08
A confirmation shows the invite was sent, with the same search field ready to invite another friend.
Step 09
Generating a link instead shows a shareable invite URL that expires in 7 days, with an option to make it permanent.
A proposed measurement framework for this product exercise. The concept was not shipped or measured.
MAU
Potential business logic from the source model, not observed impact.
