BeReal

Community

I acquired and began managing r/BeReal_App roughly three years ago and helped develop it into an active independent community for BeReal users.

Rather than treating Reddit solely as a moderation platform, I use the community as a source of qualitative product research. Recurring complaints, feature requests, bugs, confusion around product changes, and positive reactions reveal patterns that are difficult to identify from isolated feedback.

• Community moderation and standards
• Subreddit organization and user support
• Announcements and recurring discussion management
• Identifying trends across thousands of user conversations

Product Research

My process starts by identifying repeated themes across community discussions. When multiple users report similar behavior, I compare reports, gather context, look for common conditions, test the behavior when possible, and consolidate the findings into a clearer product signal.

“Here is the recurring behavior, who it affects, how it can be reproduced, what users expected instead, and what could potentially improve it.”

• Bugs and feature requests
• Release reactions and UI experiments
• Social interactions, streak behavior, and notifications
• Photo saving, commenting, reactions, and other core product flows

UI & UX Feedback

I have reviewed experimental and production interfaces with a focus on interaction clarity, discoverability, hierarchy, friction, and how changes affect existing BeReal behavior. When visual communication was more effective than written feedback, I created scratch designs and interface concepts.

• Comment interfaces and comment sheets
• Reaction experiences and social interaction flows
• First-comment indicators and photo-saving behavior
• Separate front and back photo exports
• Sharing flows and location editing
• Recaps, memories, streak experiences, and community-requested improvements

Beta Testing

Through TestFlight and early product access, I tested new and experimental experiences before or during broader releases. Testing included interface behavior, interaction changes, regressions, unexpected states, and how experimental features compared with existing user behavior.

Combining beta access with an active user community provides another perspective: I can compare how I interpret a feature while testing it with how users respond once similar functionality appears in the product.

Experiment & Engagement Feedback

I have also discussed product experiments and their effect on user behavior. One example involved changes to BeReal’s commenting experience, where engagement data indicated that the experiment reduced commenting activity.

Situations like this connect interface decisions with measurable behavioral changes rather than relying only on subjective design preference.

Reliability Investigation

One community investigation involved users reporting that they had posted their BeReal on time but were still being marked as late. I compared multiple reports and identified several systems that could potentially become inconsistent with one another.

I consolidated the reports into a product-level reliability problem rather than treating each report independently. That is the way I approach community feedback: identify patterns, determine where the actual product failure may exist, and communicate the issue in a form that can be investigated by the team.

• Notification delivery
• Capture timing
• Server timestamps
• Daily post assignment
• Streak state

Product Ideas

Alongside bug reports and interface feedback, I have developed product concepts based on recurring community requests and observed behavior. The objective is not simply to collect feature requests, but to understand why users want them and how they could fit into the existing BeReal experience.

• Improved, automatic, or bulk photo saving
• Independent front and back photo exports
• Comment experiences and sharing improvements
• Monthly Recaps and Streak Recovery
• Social interaction concepts

Working With The Team

Over time, my involvement has led to direct conversations with people across BeReal’s product, engineering, community, and leadership teams. These conversations have included product feedback, UI concepts, user sentiment, feature ideas, beta observations, and community findings.

This created a feedback loop between an independent user community and the people building the product.