It’s 1999. MySpace, Facebook and Reddit are years away.
Entrepreneur Jeffrey Gilbert runs The Dilly, a community forum for high school and college students. He asks me to help with an ambitious redesign, heavily focused on member profiles.
BADGES WERE HOT
Verified members already had profile badges, but we wondered what other kinds of engagement we could incentivize with similar, collectible rewards.
EMOJI WERE NOT
Early emoji were pretty basic. We envisioned big, expressive profile avatars that would reflect the community’s young and rebellious counter-culture.
THE HUNT WAS ON
These trophies would release in secret, with no instructions. When a new one appeared on someone’s profile, other members rushed to figure out how to unlock it.
We Were Here
“The Rank Icons” became coveted status symbols for members and recognizable mascots for the company. At its height, The Dilly had become the underground clubhouse for nearly a million of the Internet’s coolest kids— a quaint number today, but a proud feat for three misfits who didn’t realize they were building one of the first modern social networks.
