AnonEcho — Leave a thought. Let it find you later

AnonEcho is an anonymous social app where your words travel through strangers’ feeds, then come back to you.

Project Overview

AnonEcho is a Korean social app for words you want to say, but not to anyone you know. A short note travels through strangers’ feeds and, once its journey is done, comes back to the writer. In a two-person team with my sister, who planned and built the product, I designed the whole experience. The name joins “anonymous” and “echo”.

Type

Team project

Duration

2026.05 – Present

Role

Product designer: UI/UX, branding (logo), UX copy, motion

Tool

Figma, After Effects, Photoshop, Framer

Status

Pre-launch, before App Store review, Korea only

What it is

You write a short note (up to 400 characters and 4 photos) and send it as an “echo”. It travels through other people’s feeds until it has been delivered the number of times you chose, then leaves the feed and comes back to you. You decide whether it is public, and whether people can react or reply. Replies open a private 1:1 chat, never a public thread.

Why it exists

Some things are too heavy for friends, too much for an ordinary social feed, and too exposed for a public forum. AnonEcho offers a place for words meant for no one in particular that still hope to reach someone. Readers take part just by reading quietly. This is the founding assumption, not a researched finding.

Visual language — Calm, minimal, and intuitively structured

Everything starts from one image: in Korea, you shout from a mountain and the mountain answers back. The logo turns that mountain into a speech bubble, and the same mountain returns in the first-journey guide and on the return screen, so the brand tells the product’s story. The green comes from the same mountain: a soft, natural tone chosen to feel calm and safe, the kind of place where it is easy to say what is on your mind.

Design Challenges

01 Giving every word a defined ending

Problem

Some feelings need to come out now, to someone, just not anyone you know, and you may want them back minutes later. On social apps a post stays until you delete it, in front of people who know you. I wanted the writer to decide how far their words go, and when they end.

What I did.

The writer sets how many deliveries the echo needs (20 by default).

While it travels, the writer’s own list hides the text and shows only progress: the share of deliveries done, not time left or a score. From the same list, the writer can recall it at any time.
Return, recall and delete are separate states. A returned echo leaves the feed but stays readable for the writer and anyone who reacted or bookmarked it. A recalled echo is kept private.

Outcome

Every echo now has an ending the writer chose: it returns, is recalled, or is deleted, and each means something different.

Choose the ending, then let it go

Compose → first send → sent echoes. The Korean UI is shown as designed; lettered markers match the English translations below each screen.

02 Making sure every echo comes home

Problem

A number the writer picks only works if the feed can deliver it. In a newest-first feed, posts sink fast, and before launch there was no usage data to tune it with.

What I did

Built a simulation of the feed to find where an echo might never come back.

Older echoes come back up: 1 slot in 8 goes to echoes over 24 hours old that the reader hasn’t seen in 12 hours, oldest first, marked “echoed again”.
Any echo returns after 7 days, even if it falls short.
The writer is never told when it will return. Not knowing is part of the experience, so these safety nets work quietly in the background.

Outcome

The model showed where echoes stall: with 50 daily readers, a target of 50 almost never came back, and with 20 readers, a target of 20 took about a day. Those cases now end in a quiet 7-day return instead of an echo stuck in transit. Figures are simulation output from assumed usage.

03 The return moment

Problem

AnonEcho has none of the usual reasons to come back: no followers, no public comments, no friends’ feed. Many echoes will get few or no reactions, and a post that simply goes quiet gives the writer nothing to return for.

What I did

Made the return itself the reward. Every echo comes back to its writer, whether or not anyone responded, and the 7-day return from 02 guarantees it.

The return starts where the waiting happened: the progress bar on the sent list fills to 100%, then a notice arrives with the echo character in motion.
The return detail leads with distance, not popularity. “Came back over N mountains” sits above replies and reactions, so those feel like extras rather than the measure of success.

Outcome

The writer’s loop no longer depends on other users: write, let it go, and the echo comes home on its own. Replies and reactions add to the return, but it feels complete without them. The sequence is in the current iOS build; in beta I’ll look at whether writers open the return and post again afterwards, which is the habit this moment is meant to build.

The moment it comes home

The return detail, as designed in Korean. Lettered markers match the English below.

Reflection

AnonEcho is waiting for App Store review, so this page shows decisions, not results.

The main lesson: with no data, a simple model still turned the delivery number from a guess into a rule I can defend and tune.

What I will test first

Do writers tell a return apart from a deletion, and know who can still see it?
Do public, reply and reaction settings mean what people expect?

Next

Check the simulation’s assumptions against real beta data, and tune how often echoes are shown, including the resurfacing ratio, to match.