Relieving stress through creative hobbies
Role
Industry/Org
Timeline
Project info
Scope of Work
I wanted to explore how to make creative learning approachable for busy professionals who often hesitate to start hobbies due to cost, time, and confidence barriers. Playden is a hobby-focused learning platform that connects learners with approachable creative experts through flexible, project-based and community-driven learning.
Usability Testing
Branding
Product Strategy
Design System
Challenge
Many professionals crave creative hobbies but struggle to find accessible and low-pressure ways to explore them. Existing platforms like Skillshare or MasterClass focus on structured courses, which can feel too formal or time-consuming. Learners often feel intimidated, lack accountability, or lose motivation without supportive feedback or community interaction.
Solution
User Research
To understand how people approach creative hobbies, I conducted four user interviews with busy professionals who either wanted to start or recently explored a hobby.
Affinity Diagram
The key insights revealed users seek low-commitment, affordable ways to explore hobbies through guided micro-projects and supportive communities that emphasize encouragement and stress relief over competition or pressure.
After need identification, I conducted a competitive audit to analyze how existing platforms address (or fail to address) those gaps.
Competitive Audit
This helped validate user pain points and define differentiation opportunities for Playden by making comparative analysis.
Design Process
After roughly creating the sitemap, I moved on to the sketches and pinned few websites as inspiration.
Sitemapping and Sketching
After visualizing and prioritizing the key features on sketches, I conducted usability testing on the low fidelity prototyping with five users.
Lo-fi Prototyping and Usability Testing
After fixing the layout errors and improvising the copyrighting in onboarding, I defined the brand identity with a color palette reflecting a warm, playful, and community driven identity.
Defining the brand guidelines
I performed two rounds of high fildelity design iterations based on the feedback from senior designers.
Playing with the color combinations
Final Design and Interface
Onboarding Questionnaires
Landing Page
Community Feed & Private Group
Booking flow
Result
Playden is to reduce intimidation and offering structured guidance within a community, making it easier to start, stay motivated, and enjoy learning without pressure for beginners.
that 78% of users said made learning feel less overwhelming
where 3 out of 4 testers felt more comfortable sharing progress
helping 70% of users complete interest selection and learning methods
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who works in a biotech company
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DJ amatuer
who works as a software engineer
