Redesigned a marketing app to boost posting activity by 83% through a streamlined sharing flow
Team
Me, CEO, 1 Mobile Developer
Time Frame
2023-2025
Summary
The SI In Real Life (IRL) App was redesigned from an underused social platform into a one-click marketing tool that made posting 80% faster and reignited engagement across thousands of Stylists. As the sole designer, I restructured its flow and content experience, turning it into a daily tool Stylists rely on across North America.
The Background
Built for the Stylists Behind Silver Icing
The IRL App was initially created to support Silver Icing’s independent Stylists, the essential drivers of the brand’s community-led growth. As a Canadian fashion brand, Silver Icing relies on these women to share products, create content, and connect customers with each daily drop.
The redesigned IRL App — available on the App Store.
While IRL began as a way to help this community engage and share, it evolved into a tool that provided real business value by giving Stylists ready-made content to promote daily product launches across social media.
Today, it’s a cornerstone of how Silver Icing markets and grows alongside its community.
The Problem
Low Engagement from Launch
When I first joined the IRL App project, it was quietly struggling — a well-intentioned “social hub” that Stylists barely touched.
The app was built for selfies, reviews, and community, but that already existed on Facebook, where they chatted and shared every day. Most Stylists opened IRL only to post a review because it appeared on the customer-facing site, then went right back to Facebook to handle everything else.
Capturing the early social-app vision of IRL that saw little engagement.
Seeing how little the app was used, I wanted to understand why. Was the idea wrong, or was something in their daily workflow holding them back?
The Discovery
How Stylists actually used IRL
After talking with several Stylists about how they used IRL and Facebook day to day, I started mapping their workflow to see where things overlapped. That’s when I realized the problem wasn’t engagement — it was friction.
Stylists used IRL to publish reviews that appeared on the Front Office, but also to download photos and captions for their social posts. It had quietly become a content source, but one that still forced them to copy, paste, and re-upload everything by hand.
User Journey Map showing the download–copy–upload loop in Stylist workflow.
When I visualized the full flow, it became obvious why things felt messy. Reviews lived in IRL and showed up in the Front Office, while marketing lived on Facebook. Stylists were constantly bouncing between both. What seemed like two separate tools was really one tangled process.
Diagram mapping how Stylist reviews move across IRL, the Front Office, and Facebook.
This uncovered a clear opportunity to redesign IRL as an all-in-one hub that connects reviews and marketing into one seamless sharing experience.
The Initial Goal
From Social App to the First Scheduling Idea
We first imagined IRL as a daily marketing checklist that told Stylists what to post each day with preset content, captions, and scheduled times to auto-publish to Facebook. The goal was to make posting automatic so Stylists could focus on selling.
Early user flow: first iteration of the Scheduling Idea.
But as we tested it, we saw that every Stylist worked differently. The rigid structure didn’t fit everyone’s routine, and setting exact dates only added friction. Then came the breaking point: Facebook announced it would block all third-party schedulers, ending our plan overnight and pushing us to find a more flexible way to simplify sharing inside the app.
Facebook’s policy update that ended support for third-party schedulers
The Breakthrough
Found the real win in one-click sharing
The loss of scheduling made us rethink what “effortless posting” really meant.
To validate our designs, I conducted usability tests with Stylists to understand what made posting feel natural. Their feedback revealed a clear truth: flexibility mattered more than automation. That realization led to a breakthrough when we used the phone’s native share system to post directly to other platforms.
Lo-fi prototype exploring one-click sharing — the moment we simplified the entire posting process.
This became the foundation of the new flow. By surfacing product images, captions, and links in one place, Stylists could build and share posts in a single, intuitive step.
The Final Design
Streamlined posting with daily drops and smart cards
We focused on making sharing simple and flexible. Stylists could browse upcoming launches in a calendar view, select product images, toggle pre-written text, and share directly to their social apps in one seamless flow.
How Stylists browse Daily Drops, select content, and share instantly.
Stylists’ biggest question was always, “What should I post today?”
Daily Drops answered that by surfacing everything launching that day in one place, while Smart Cards kept content organized and easy to find.
But wait, there’s more!
Upgraded Stylist Reviews into shareable assets
IRL started with Stylist selfies on the homepage. When we turned it into a marketing tool, we didn’t replace that content. We made it better.
Reviews were already gold but hard to share. We built them into the same sharing flow as marketing graphics from Head Office, so Stylists could pair a Review with official product details and share it in one step.
It made IRL feel complete, a single place for both authentic and brand-driven content.
Stylists can now share their Reviews directly to social apps in one step, no downloads or copy-paste needed.
The Impact
A faster share flow that fueled +83% posting growth
We transformed the rarely used IRL App into an essential marketing tool for Stylists.
By simplifying the share flow, posting became up to 80% faster, reigniting engagement across the platform. IRL now automatically assembles each post with images and a suggested caption, then hands it off to the chosen platform to remove most of the copy-paste and app switching that slowed Stylists down. Within a single release cycle, total IRL posts climbed +83%, marking the highest activity in a year.
Stylists now describe the process as instinctive.
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“The redesign turned a multi-step, time-draining workflow into a seamless one-stop posting experience that fits even the busiest schedules.”
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![Facebook comment from Brenda Douglas Shearter noting her positive experience with a new app, praising its ease of transition and information.]()
“AMAZING AND PAINLESS!! … Posting has been a breeze.”
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![Facebook comment with an image from the TV show Seinfeld featuring Cosmo Kramer pointing his finger, with the caption "You just blew my mind."]()
“This app update is MIND-BLOWING! From where we started to this is UNREAL!”
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![Facebook comment from a user with an award icon labeled 'All-star contributor'. The comment expresses excitement about a new feature that links app reviews to Facebook profile and encourages selfies.]()
“I’m blown away … you can hit the Facebook button and it takes them right to my page.”
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![Screenshot of a social media comment praising an app and its educational content.]()
“Omg unreal, this app is soooo goooood!!! You guys are making it easy!”
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![Screenshot of a social media comment from a person with a profile picture of a woman, saying: 'Time to start using the app again, this is amazing! Great work everyone involved.' with a heart icon reaction.]()
“Time to start using the app again, this is amazing!”
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![Screenshot of a Facebook comment praising a technology called Stories, mentioning ease of use and successful login without issues, signed by Christina Marcano.]()
“It was so simple to use and worked on my first try — thank you for this technology!”
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![User comment on social media praising a product for including available quantities, calling it a game changer, and using clapping emojis.]()
“Thank you for including quantities that are available!! This is a game changer 👏👏👏”
The Reflection
Small changes create lasting habits
This project reminded me that meaningful improvement often comes from removing, not adding.
At first, we tried giving Stylists a fixed plan for what to post each day. What truly helped them succeed was freedom, supported by clear information and simple tools. Once we removed the extra steps, sharing became second nature. I also learned that sustainable design means documenting systems and decisions so others can continue building after handoff.
In the end, simplifying how Stylists worked changed how we built products as a team.
