Trendnow
Trendnow turns live search trends into discussion. Each keyword in the Top 10 automatically opens a time limited board, with an AI summary and related news explaining why the topic is surging.
Users read enough to join in, post while the topic is alive, and can do all of it from a Chrome extension without visiting the site first.
Client
Team Side Project
Year
2025
Project type
Web Platform / Chrome Extension
Credits
Product Strategy, UX/UI Design, Prototyping
Challenge
Seeing a trend takes a second. Joining the conversation takes too long.
Trend rankings show what is gaining attention, not why it matters.
To find out, users hop from a search portal to news sites to whichever forum happens to be discussing it.
The window is short: a keyword that tops the ranking in the morning can be irrelevant by evening.
Research
The problem was not a lack of information, but the distance between seeing, understanding, and joining in
I reviewed search portals, news products, and online communities,
and looked at engagement signals such as post views, comments, and time spent.
The research revealed three disconnected experiences
Rankings offered immediacy but no explanation. News offered information but nothing to do with it. Communities hosted discussion but were not built around topics that expire. No product covered the whole path.
How might we?
How might we help people go from spotting a topic to understanding it to joining its discussion, before the moment passes?
My Role
I designed the product across the website and Chrome extension
As the product designer on this team side project, I defined the concept and designed the full path
from spotting a keyword to understanding the issue to posting on its board.
That covered product research, information architecture, user flows, interaction and UI design,
prototyping, usability validation, the design system, and developer handoff.
Key Contributions
01
Market and competitor research
02
Product strategy and information architecture
03
Time limited board system
Key Solutions
Three moments between noticing a topic and talking about it
Trendnow shortens one path. Discover a topic, understand it, and join its board before the timer runs out.
Each solution owns one step.
Dashboard for writers
Outcome
The MVP showed stronger activation and longer sessions
01
+40%
increase in new-user activation
02
5 → 8 min
average session time
03
Top 10
live keywords in one view
04
1 click
board access from the Chrome extension
05
2 surfaces
one consistent product
Reflection
A real time community must stay trustworthy after the initial surge
Speed alone does not make a community sustainable. Fast moving, expiring boards invite misinformation,
duplicated threads, and abusive posts, and every trending spike raises moderation demand.
Designing for urgency meant designing for its side effects, and the MVP identified more of these than it solved.
The product also runs on borrowed data. Ranking freshness depends on external sources, AI summaries need
accuracy and visible sourcing, and empty, delayed, or failed states had to be designed rather than hoped away.
The extension brought its own duties around minimal permissions and privacy, and timers, ranking shifts,
and constantly changing content raise accessibility questions we only began to answer.
The next phase covers clearer source attribution, reporting and blocking tools, saved activity,
interest based notifications, and permanent category boards for conversations that deserve to outlive a trend.
First in line is source attribution, because trust in the summary is what everything else stands on.
Next project
Everyone Waiter
