Recently we had an opportunity to speak with Yaroslav Zubko, the Lead Product Designer at FameLab about FameLab

Please share with us the backstory of what motivated you to create this app.

I was always interested in the best design practices and processes. I was fortunate to learn and get experience of best designers in the industry working at such companies as Luxoft, SoftServe, Tinder and UpTop where I had a chance to implement my process expertise. FameLab was one of my projects that really resonated with my beliefs in invoking user emotions with the experience of using the product.

What features do you hope to roll out to your app in the future?

I believe that the content sharing is at a very interesting point in history now. Not so long ago it would take users hours to prepare a picture to be posted on social media and now posting a video takes seconds. I believe video is a new way to interact on the social media now and we won't miss a chance to stay on top of this wave. Stay tuned!

What has been the most rewarding aspect of the creation of this app?

The biggest reward I received as a designer was knowledge and experience that came from our product challenges. The main challenge of the design process was to research user's behaviors while operating within social media. We held user interviews to find the value we were to bring basing on the conventional patterns and the principles of user experience.

What is the coolest or most innovative feature of your app?

We believe we incorporated a unique gamification system in which users will get rewarded with more exposure for posting content that is relevant to them. As a user you don't have to pretend to be someone else to be "liked" by your peers, just share yourself with the world and we'll make sure this is the most famous version of yourself.

What surprised you most in your journey to create this app?

Given my experience I can say that regardless of what you might expect users to do with your product they can always find a way to surprise you. We had dozens of user test before committing to the final version of each part of the app. I was surprised dozens times. You might think given famous social media apps that are on the market today, user conventions will be somewhat similar but there are still so many edge cases that we had to account for. Those edge cases of user interaction with our product were probably the most surprising to me.

Which other mobile apps or technology have inspired you?

I've always been a fan of friendly, human-like products that could resonate with what we consider to be a "good and kind" version of ourselves. I think the original iMac shipped in a multi color was a good example of this trend.

Do you have any recommendations or advice for others wanting to create a mobile app?

The only advise I can give is to have a vision and enough persistence to carry that vision through. Spot a problem, find a solution, assemble the right people and ship it.

How did you decide which platforms to release your app on and do you plan on releasing your app to other platforms?

Our decision to cover IOS first was mostly driven by time/value ratio. We wanted to bring the best possible experience to our users and it just so happened that that we were able to do it on IOS first. With that being said, in the nearest future we plan to release it on other platforms too, including Android.

How is your app different than the rest of the market? Which unique need does it fill?

Nowadays social media has become a big part of human interaction. People post pictures and videos on their way to work, while waiting for a waiter to bring them food or just as a way to share vacation experience. The challenges provided by modern conventions in sharing information is filtering. We believe the best skill people can have in the modern society is to differentiate a value in the never-ending stream of data coming their way on a daily, hourly basis. Our app uses unique machine learning algorithms to serve you prioritized content based on your current interests in the engaging and gamified way.

You can view FameLab here