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PlayLab
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WORK / 002 / 2024

SocialTime

Turning expertise into a live digital world.

Industry
Social / Learning / Marketplace
Discipline
Digital Product
Type
Web Application / Platform
Duration
4–6 months
Engagement
Multi-phase platform
PlayLab's role
Designed and developed
Status
Live and publicly accessible
Website
socialtime.io
Last verified
10 Aug 2026
Role
Product Direction, UX/UI Design, Design System, Web Application Design, Development, Interaction Design

SocialTime is a live learning and expert-discovery platform built around real-time conversations, communities and access to specialists.

The product combines live rooms, expert discovery, one-to-one coaching, short-form learning content, communities, messaging and personalized discovery into one ecosystem.

The challenge was not designing a page. It was designing a world.

The spine

01  /  The brief

Turn expertise into a place that is visibly happening — live sessions, communities and experts in one platform.

02  /  The constraint

Live and archived content compete for the same attention; the interface had to make 'now' unmistakable without shouting.

03  /  What we made

  • Product design across 6 experience areas
  • 80+ application screens
  • Live-state and scheduling interface patterns
  • Community, expert and session models
  • Design system and component library

04  /  What came of it

The platform reads as an event rather than a content library — presence is the first thing the interface communicates.

01  /  Context

SocialTime contains multiple product behaviours inside one platform: live sessions, expert profiles, AI-powered expert discovery, private coaching, communities, messaging, content feeds, replays, upcoming sessions, user profiles, discovery, credits and participation.

The design challenge was creating enough density to make the platform feel alive without allowing that density to become overwhelming.

Motion-blurred figures crossing a lit space

02  /  Idea

KNOWLEDGESHOULDFEEL LIVE.

Instead of treating education as a static library, SocialTime was designed around presence. Who is live? What is happening now? Who should I meet? What should I watch next? Which community should I join?

The product experience makes learning feel social rather than solitary.

03  /  Experience

The interface combines discovery and participation. Users can browse live sessions, explore experts, join communities, watch short-form knowledge content, book one-to-one sessions and communicate inside the same environment.

The system required a visual language flexible enough to handle content-heavy discovery while maintaining hierarchy across a large number of product modules.

The result is closer to a social ecosystem than a traditional course platform.

Key experience areas

  • Live Rooms
  • SocialTalks
  • Expert Discovery
  • AI Expert Matching
  • 1:1 Coaching
  • Communities
  • Messaging
  • Discovery Feed
  • Replays
  • Profiles
  • Scheduling
  • Credits
Warm interior with people out of focus

04  /  Making

A product with many modules can quickly begin to resemble enterprise software. The interface instead needed to feel immediate, active and human.

Content hierarchy, visual density and interaction patterns were designed around discovery rather than administration — and shipped as a design system so a four-to-six month build stayed coherent from the first module to the last.

Design challenge

Make complexity feel social.

Not another content library. A place where knowledge is happening now.

Credits

Product Direction
PlayLab
Design System
PlayLab
Interaction Design
PlayLab
Development
PlayLab
Client
SocialTime
Many hands overlapping in warm low light

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