At Together Labs (the team behind IMVU), we launched WithMe—a new 3D mobile social platform built in Unreal Engine 5—and as the founding designer, I shaped the product experience end-to-end to deliver interconnected, real-time interactions with modern avatars beyond IMVU’s chat-centric worlds.

The project was born out of a perceived gap in the social media and gaming landscape, especially for Gen-Z teens.

‍Loneliness is on the rise: Even before the pandemic, studies showed an increase in loneliness, particularly among teens.

‍"Social" media isn't truly social: Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are often about passive scrolling and media consumption, not active, shared experiences with friends.

‍Games lack meaningful social components: While many games are adding social features, they are often an afterthought rather than a core focus.

‍Existing platforms feel flat: Current tools like DMs, email, and Zoom feel distant and lack the "spatial socializing" that is psychologically important for connection.

Discovery is the product’s first promise: show me where my people are and why I should join now. Each room card answers that at a glance—friends already inside, what you can do (activity chips), who’s hosting, and what’s playing. Themed swimlanes group rooms by vibe, and one-tap join removes friction. A dark theme of purple (trust/identity) and teal (fresh energy) keeps it legible and on-brand.

Once you’re in, we make watching together actually feel together. The early “everyone controls YouTube” model caused thrash, so we redesigned it as a YouTube queue with role clarity and fairness: host-led playback when present, democratic FIFO when not, one slot per person, and a vote-to-skip that only counts engaged viewers.

Drawing Together is a canvas-first, 2–4 player Pictionary-style game designed for warm, low-pressure togetherness. Each round follows a simple rhythm—prompt → draw/guess → reveal—with gentle timers to add energy without stress and little celebration beats on the reveal. The goal is social: make it easy to contribute, build camaraderie through teamwork, and turn small wins into real friendship.

Chat Chair lowers the barrier to meeting someone new. It’s a two-seat ritual for low-pressure 1:1s: when one seat fills, the room gets a friendly invite; four short prompt-and-answer rounds keep things structured and positive—emotes included, with no open text during play to avoid negativity. Chairs are themed (movies, music, etc.) to align interests without extra UI weight. At the end, players can keep chatting and add each other as friends.

I led the end-to-end translation of our design system from Figma into Unreal—owning the UI implementation strategy, setting quality bars, and unblocking engineering. I defined the UMG/Blueprint architecture, established a responsive widget library, and drove a tintable-texture/material-instance pipeline that let the team change colors in-editor rather than re-exporting assets. I also formalized override patterns in the graph so nested components could safely customize properties. These decisions improved consistency, cut asset bloat, and sped up iteration across teams.

WithMe’s launch window showed strong traction: average Day-0 playtime ~29 minutes vs a 16-minute goal, CPI ~$0.74, a ~4.4 App Store rating, and 1,000+ Insiders opting in to help grow the community. Early optimization signals were encouraging too: +6% registration completion from moving avatar setup up-front, and a beta iteration credited with +23% D7 retention.