Reddit Recap

Reddit recap is the end of year event where we personalize and show how users used the platform. 

Reddit Recap began as a passion project "Reddit Wrapped" during Reddit's internal hackathon "Snoosweek". Our small team won the Hackathon that year by envisioning what Reddit Recap could become-an engaging way for users to reflect on their year on the platform.

In 2022, I led the motion design for the Recap cards, crafting animations that brought each card to life, from card reveals to stats displays. Additionally, I animated the marketing materials for Recap, aligning them with the year's theme, "Piling Up," to reflect the accumulation of user activity throughout the year.

Biggest Design Challenges

1. Needed to be Inclusive

Starting from Product and Design (huge shoutout to Tavish and Louise), the requirements were hard. First, we needed to be inclusive. Whether you’re a lurker or power user, there’s always value in contributing on Reddit.

2. Needed alignment with Marketing and Comms Messaging and Tone

OrangeRed also had to ensure consistent branding and themes across all three Recap projects. It’s hard to be Reddity, and we were competing in an environment where a lot of other companies were doing similar things.

3. Needed to get people to admit they were Redditors

Lastly Reddit has largely been an pseudo-anonymous platform. We wanted to encourage people to share, but of course also to stay safe, and so a major part of the design was to make sure users would be able to share without doxxing themselves.

Solutions & Deliverables

Animated Highlights: I developed and animated key interactive Recap moments, including transitions between cards, community highlights, and engagement statistics. These animations were designed to be fast, engaging, and consistent across all platforms.

User Identity Control: I designed intuitive privacy control animations for sharing features, allowing users to toggle username/avatar visibility seamlessly.

Cross-platform Consistency: Collaborating with product designers and engineers, I ensured that the UI animations adhered to Reddit’s OrangeRed framework and maintained visual consistency across web and mobile applications.

Sharing Features: I worked closely with the backend team to optimize and animate the shareable Recap cards, making them easily exportable and visually appealing for social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Recap 2022 has improved brand recognition, encouraged user engagement and resurrected dormant users. We surpassed our initial goal of 12M viewers and reached an overwhelming 21 million Recap viewers this year.