Minutiae

Minutiae is a conceptual photo app capturing the overlooked details of daily life.

I joined Minutiae on 2025 May. As a intern, I work multiple tasks of product promotion, growth, events and related projects.

01. Project Overview

Minutiae(minutiae-app.org) is a mobile app that challenges traditional social media by focusing on the ordinary and unfiltered. At a random minute each day, users have 60 seconds to capture whatever is in front of them. If another user happens to capture their moment at the same time, the images are swapped anonymously — no names, no likes, no followers.

Launched in 2016, Minutiae has grown into a global community with 30,000+ daily active users. To deepen engagement, the app provides monthly email summaries of captured moments and offers yearly physical products (posters or books) as optional in-app purchases.

This strong foundation made it an exciting environment to contribute to as a design intern, working on both growth-focused improvements and creative user experiences.

02. SEO & Product Page Improvements

As part of my internship, I focused on improving Minutiae’s visibility and first impression in the App Store — crucial challenges for a niche app competing with large players like 1 Second Everyday.

SEO Research

I used Sensor Tower and Google Search Console to analyze keyword performance and user search behavior. By studying both Minutiae’s own data and competitor benchmarks, I gained insights into how different strategies impact ranking. This allowed me to identify new keyword opportunities and refine how the app could position itself in search.

Key contributions:

• Collected and compared keyword data across platforms.

• Conducted competitor analysis (benchmarking against 1 Second Everyday).

• Optimized title, subtitle, description, and keyword set to increase discoverability.

Product Page Updates

Beyond search visibility, I worked on improving the App Store product page to better communicate the app’s value. This included:

• Redesigning the screenshots to prioritize the app’s unique first interaction.

• Highlighting the link between the app and its physical products (posters, books).

• Designing multiple versions of page layouts for testing and optimization.

Outcome

These improvements resulted in a noticeable boost in App Store performance and daily active users, with an increase of approximately +300 DAU per week.

03. From Data to Artwork: Constellations

When Minutiae users complete the four-year challenge of capturing a photo every day, they have the option to purchase a keepsake of their journey. In the past, this took the form of a printed book that archived their images.

In 2023, the team explored a new format: posters. Based on past purchase statistics (estimated ~5,000 buyers), I developed a system to programmatically generate personalized posters for users at scale.

My Concept

I drew inspiration from stars and constellations to translate users’ daily moments into visual form. Each captured moment became a “star,” and together they formed constellations unique to each user’s life — turning personal data into artwork.

The layout is designed and computed with multiple refining processes.

Technical Execution

To make this scalable and fully automated, I built a pipeline using:

• JavaScript & Python for data processing and visualization.

• Google Firebase for user data handling.

• Automation libraries for browser-driven poster generation.

The result was a generative poster system that seamlessly transformed thousands of users’ photo-taking histories into bespoke visual artifacts, bridging data, code, and design.

04. Impact & Learnings

Impact

During my internship, my contributions supported measurable growth for Minutiae:

• Improved retention rates across 30-day, 10-day, and 1-day intervals.

• A boost of +5,00 daily active users per week, during my time.

• Stronger SEO performance, improving the app’s discoverability in the App Store.

Learnings

Working on Minutiae has been an ongoing experience, teaching me how to contribute meaningfully to a product with a distinct identity and active user base. Key takeaways so far include:

• Designing within an established ecosystem — balancing innovation with respect for the app’s philosophy.

• Thinking with growth in mind, using SEO and product positioning as design levers.

• Exploring physical, personalized products as an extension of digital experiences, turning data into meaningful artifacts.

I continue to collaborate with the team on new tasks, such as monthly email design and event-driven features, extending my learnings as the project evolves.