BeReal Redesign
BeRealer Than Ever Before: Revamping BeReal's social experience to boost long-term engagement without compromising its authenticity-first mission.
In 2022, BeReal went from a niche app to a global hit: 73.5 million monthly active users at its peak. But by late 2022, growth stalled, downloads declined, and the app that once felt refreshingly different started to feel repetitive. For UC Davis's Design Interactive, our team of five took on a six-week sprint to understand why people were drifting away and how BeReal could win them back without becoming the very thing it stood against.
BeReal's viral moment didn't translate into a lasting habit.
By August 2022, BeReal had 73.5 million monthly active users and ~20 million daily actives. By Q4 2022, downloads fell for the first time since 2021. U.S. monthly actives dropped from a 3.7M peak to just over 3M by August 2023. Meanwhile, Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok had copied BeReal's dual-camera mechanic and folded it into much richer ecosystems.
Three core friction points surfaced:
Repetition. The single daily post format made the app feel like "same photo, different day." Without lightweight ways to play, react, or remix, there wasn't much to do once you'd posted.
Social pressure. Posting unfiltered content to your entire friends list every day created real anxiety. BeReal's authenticity premise and the pressure to present well were in direct conflict, with no release valve.
A forgotten Discovery page. Discovery existed, but users described it as random and irrelevant. With no way to control what they saw, it wasn't worth opening.
Competitive landscape: BeReal vs. Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok
Designing within constraints: no ads, no influencers, no addiction loops.
BeReal explicitly rejects ads, influencer culture, and addictive design. That constraint had to be designed within, not around. We combined a literature review, competitive analysis, and direct user research to understand the full picture.
"Even though the purpose is to be authentic, I still felt the need to curate my post of the day."
BeReal user, in-depth interview"It can get repetitive and boring because it's only one post per day."
BeReal user, survey responseAffinity mapping: synthesizing survey data and interview insights
Three pain points drove everything we built.
Posts are becoming repetitive and boring: the daily format with no variation leaves users with nothing new to engage with.
Users aren't posting on time. Social pressure is the real blocker: 67% retake before posting, only 9% post on time.
Discovery is rarely opened and doesn't feel worth opening. No personalization, no control, no reason to return.
Four features. One principle: lower the stakes without lowering the authenticity.
BeReal Prompts
Optional daily challenges (e.g., "Make a silly face") that attach to your BeReal. Users can also submit prompts to be randomly assigned to friends. Addresses the repetition problem by giving people something to play with, without forcing it.
BeReal Prompts: prompt selection and post flow
BeCloser
A close friends circle that lets users share certain posts with a smaller, private group. Circles can be created and edited anytime without notifying anyone. Addresses the social pressure problem by giving users a lower-stakes audience when they need it.
BeCloser: circle creation and sharing flow
Memory Highlights
Pin up to 7 past BeReals on your profile. Revamped memories calendar with Week, Month, Year views. Gives users a reason to revisit and a way to surface their best moments without filtering in the moment.
Memory Highlights: calendar view and pinning flow
Discovery 2.0
Curate your own Discovery by choosing up to 3 countries per day. Globe-spin mechanic for serendipitous discovery. Addresses the Discovery problem by adding just enough control without turning it into a full feed-curation system.
Discovery 2.0: globe interface and country selection
Two rounds of testing. Every feature changed.
We tested all four features across two rounds of usability testing with real BeReal users. Here's what we learned and fixed:
Prompts made posting feel less mundane. But when declined, it disappeared, users wanted to revisit it. Home screen felt cluttered. Fix: Added a persistent prompt entry point and simplified layout.
Layout made it unclear where close-friends content lived. Lightning-bolt icon didn't communicate "inner circle." 50/50 split on whether they'd use it. Fix: Redesigned icon, added in-context onboarding.
Calendar felt intuitive. Users liked pinning moments. Highlight upload flow felt hidden. Fix: Embedded the flow more naturally with clearer step-by-step guidance.
Users liked exploring different parts of the world. Too many filter options up front felt overwhelming. Fix: Leaned into the globe as the primary interaction, reduced visible controls.
Final prototype: consolidated flow across all four features
What the testing told us, in numbers.
Memory Highlights had the highest perceived value score of all four features in post-test surveys. Users consistently described it as "the reason to keep the app installed," a signal that long-term retention, not just daily engagement, was the real opportunity BeReal was missing.
Designing within a product's ethos is harder, and more valuable, than designing from scratch.
Designing within BeReal's authenticity ethos was the defining constraint of this project. Having a clear product philosophy forced us to say no to easy engagement wins and treat constraints as a design tool rather than a limitation.
Early on it was tempting to "fix engagement" by adding more notifications or feeds. But when 67% of users are already retaking photos before posting, and only 9% post on time, the problem isn't the UI. It's the underlying pressure. That pushed us toward lowering the stakes rather than adding more things to tap.
BeCloser split users right down the middle at 50/50. That kind of feedback only comes from getting something in front of real people early. If I could go back, I'd spend more time on Discovery 2.0. Even after two rounds of testing it felt more like a clever idea than a fully validated direction.