Work / Reddit
Reddit — Redesign for IPO Readiness
Reddit had 50 million daily active users and a platform that had not fundamentally changed in years. The user base was vocal, protective, and resistant to change. IPO was on the horizon. My job: lead a ground-up redesign without burning the community down.
The Problem
Years of fragmented contributions had left Reddit with inconsistent UI patterns, a non-responsive codebase, slow load times, and poor onboarding for new users. The original scope was mobile web only — tablets and desktops were afterthoughts.
I made the case for responsive design: better user experience, leaner codebase, lower long-term maintenance cost. Stakeholders agreed. Scope expanded.
The Work
Project name: Shreddit. Timeline: 11 months from kickoff to internal beta launch. Team: Director of UX, 2 Product Designers, 1 Design Technologist, 1 PM, DS team for component provision.
We rebuilt the navigation model, unified the visual language through a refreshed component library, and rewrote the frontend for performance and accessibility. Every decision was anchored in real user behavior through prototype testing and feedback loops.
The Hard Part
Reddit was engineering-led. Design was not at the strategy table. Part of my role was cultural — formalizing design processes, building cross-functional rituals, shifting the perception of UX from a service function to a strategic partner. That required building trust through data and storytelling, not just good screens.
Not all UX improvements show up immediately in dashboards. I helped the organization learn to read leading indicators, not just lagging ones — and to value qualitative insight alongside quantitative metrics.
IPO Readiness
As Reddit moved toward a potential IPO, the stakes of the redesign shifted. We were designing not just for users but for investor confidence — platform quality, scalability, and product consistency had to hold up under heightened scrutiny.
Shreddit delivered. Public beta launched within 11 months, hitting every key milestone. Cross-functional alignment was established through regular reviews that became routine. The platform was in a fundamentally stronger position — consistent, scalable, defensible.
