The Problem
LGBTQIA+ youth face heightened exposure to minority stress, discrimination, family rejection, social exclusion, across home, school, work, and public life. The digital tools meant to help introduce their own risks: outing, misused data, interfaces built on assumptions about identity that don't hold for everyone. I led the literature review, competitor analysis, persona development, design system, and final deck. Wireframing, research, prototyping, and testing were shared with my co-designer, Nhu Hua.
Research
None of the five platforms we compared, TrevorSpace, Q Chat Space, YouthLine, imi, or general social media, combine a stealth interface, configurable crisis contacts, and resources that go beyond mental health.
| Platform | Stealth UI | Crisis Config. | Diverse Resources | Data Privacy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TrevorSpace | None | None | None | Partial |
| YouthLine | Partial | None | None | Full |
| imi | None | None | None | Partial |
| Quiet Circle | Full | Full | Full | Full |
Limitations: small, self-selected sample (11 respondents, 2 interviews), urban skew, no race or ethnicity data collected. Worth naming plainly rather than glossing over.
Who We Designed For
The survey and interview data converged on one persona: a queer or non-binary young person who wants community and real resources, but needs to control exactly who finds out they're looking for either.
Family Isn't a Safe Default
Every crisis tool we reviewed assumed a family member belongs on the contact list. Our survey said otherwise: 6 of 11 participants excluded family from their crisis contacts entirely. Building Quiet Circle's core safety feature around that number, not the industry default, is what shaped everything else.
Four Directions, Before One
Each concept traced back to a specific finding, a stat from the survey, or a direct participant request. None of them were sketched to look good. They were sketched to test whether one piece of evidence actually held up as an interface.
Concept 1 — Stealth Mode Home
Appears as a generic "wellness journal" on any screen. App name, icon, and UI stay neutral. Queer-affirming content only reveals itself once the user opts into "safe mode" via a hidden gesture or PIN, directly answering the stealth requirement that shaped the whole project.
Concept 2 — Configurable Crisis Pathways
Only 4 of 10 respondents said they'd contact family in a crisis. This concept lets users define separate contact lists per context, home, school, public, so the app never defaults to family as the emergency contact.
Concept 3 — Affirming Peer Community Feed
8 of 10 respondents already use peer forums as their main support strategy. A three-tier visibility control, lurk, anonymous, named, lets someone judge whether a space feels affirming before committing their identity to it.
Concept 4 — Intersectional Resource Navigator
Participants P-5 and P-7 wanted resources beyond mental health: housing, employment, healthcare navigation. Provider cards surface safety tags upfront, no parental consent, anonymous, sliding scale, so nothing about a saved resource outs the person browsing it.
Quiet Circle isn't any one of these four. It's what survived testing each idea against the data: the stealth framing from Concept 1, the context-aware contacts from Concept 2, the visibility control from Concept 3, and the resource scope from Concept 4, combined into one product instead of shipped as four separate bets.
Mapping the Structure
Before a screen got designed, the full app got mapped: every section reachable from home, and the exact path through each core flow, thirteen in total, from first sign-up to notifying a trusted contact.
All thirteen flows, mapped before a single screen
Two of the thirteen, in detail
Signal for Help had a different constraint than the other twelve flows. Someone using it is already in a moment that needs to move fast, and often needs to not look like they're doing anything on their phone at all. From the Signal tab, a contact who's already saved is two taps from an active, tracked alert: no menu to dig through, no screens stacked in front of it. Concept 2's exploration of the same problem had already tested the discreet half of that constraint on its own, a "subtle signal" toggle that sends a quiet text with no on-screen banner, so nothing about sending it is visible to anyone nearby. Both ideas carried straight through to this flow.
The crisis hotline flow branches on its first question: a medical emergency routes straight to 911, never into the chat. Whether the user was actually satisfied with the support they got is checked explicitly, not assumed.
The Solution
Quiet Circle combines five core features in one discreet, identity-affirming interface, the combination that survived testing each concept above against the data.
Live Signal
Alerts trusted contacts in two taps, silently, with no assumption that a family member is on the list. Built fast and discreet on purpose: whoever's sending it is already in a moment that needs both. Users choose who gets notified, and a confirmation step avoids accidental sends.
Community
Peer spaces with a public/anonymous posting toggle so users control how visible they are within their own communities.
Resource Hub
Housing, employment, and affirming healthcare, not just mental health content.
Safe Settings
A stealth toggle that lets the interface present as a generic wellness app, the "not visibly queer" requirement raised directly in our survey.
Journal
Private mood tracking, kept separate from anything shared with peers or contacts.
Validated with AI before a single wireframe. Before either of us opened Figma, I used Claude Code to build a working, clickable prototype of the concept above: live Signal tracking, the emergency-contact flow, onboarding, and a home screen built to pass as a generic wellness app. That fast build-and-feel loop is what shaped decisions like keeping the stealth framing prominent, before design even started.
Two Decisions That Mattered Most
Signal needed a confirmation step
No confirmation step before a signal is sent. Unclear what the contact receives.
Added context on what happens next, plus a cancel option.
This was the one place a fast flow needed a deliberate pause, not another tap removed. The fix stayed inline rather than becoming a separate screen, so it added clarity without adding the delay the rest of the flow was built to avoid.
A blank community feed reads as broken
A newly joined community's feed appeared blank with no explanation.
Added context: "No posts yet, be the first to post in this community."
Three smaller fixes came out of the same testing round: clearer language for adding a contact who doesn't have the app installed, a renamed "Browse All Communities" button after the icon-only version got missed entirely, and a placeholder prompt so a blank post box felt less intimidating.
Wireframes to Tested Prototype
Low-fidelity wireframes mapped all five flows first. Real branding, iconography, and copy came in at mid-fidelity. We tested five core tasks on that prototype, tracking time on task, prompts needed, and errors made.
| Task | Time on Task | Prompts | Errors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Send a Signal | ~1 min 7 sec | 1 | 0 |
| Add a Contact | ~37 sec | 0 | 0 |
| Navigate Resources | ~34 sec | 0 | 0 |
| Draft a Post | ~20 sec | 0 | 0 |
| Join a Community | ~30 sec | 0 | 1 |
Design System
A calm, trustworthy palette and type pairing meant to read as a generic wellness brand at a glance.
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Title: Lora, Display / Wordmark
Heading 1: Manrope ExtraBold 24px
Body: Manrope Regular, legible and calm for everyday reading.
Every pairing in the palette was checked against WCAG AA+ before it reached a screen. This is a sample of that reference sheet.
Where This Stands, and Takeaways
Quiet Circle was built for UXD-5310, a capstone course, not a live client engagement. It hasn't shipped, and it hasn't been tested outside our original 11 survey respondents and 2 interviewees. Next: a WCAG AA accessibility review, testing with 5+ more participants (prioritizing BIPOC, rural, and neurodivergent queer youth), and exploring partnerships with YouthLine and Rainbow Health Ontario for resource curation.
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Small usability moments carry real weight
None of the iteration rounds required a redesign, just clearer language and context at the right time. For an app dealing with crisis and disclosure, that clarity isn't a nice-to-have.
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A small sample still surfaces real signal
Eleven respondents is a small base to design from. But the convergence with published literature gave us confidence the patterns we saw, discretion, distrust of family-centric defaults, were real rather than noise.
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Discretion and disclosure aren't the same problem
Being stealth on a shared screen and being ready to disclose to a peer community are different needs. Quiet Circle has to hold both without one undermining the other.
What This Shows
This project demonstrates:
- Research grounded in a real, underserved population, combining literature review, survey, and interviews
- The ability to translate sensitive, high-stakes findings into concrete design decisions
- Ownership of a full design system, from color and typography through component states
- Honest reporting of research limitations rather than overstating a small sample
- Iterative refinement driven by direct usability testing feedback