Overview
Connection starts with conversation.
As World App expanded beyond identity and payments, one gap became obvious: there was no native place for humans to talk to each other. Conversations were happening elsewhere, disconnected from identity, value exchange, and shared context.
World Chat set out to change that. The goal wasn’t to build “just another chat.”
It was to design a secure, human-first conversation space where sending a message, sending value, and proving something about yourself could happen seamlessly, without compromising privacy.
Challenge
When Messaging Stops Feeling Safe
Chat is familiar, but trust inside chat is fragile. In most messaging apps, you don’t really know who you’re talking to. Profile photos are performative. Identity is assumed. Sending money or interacting with apps inside a chat often feels risky or awkward.
For World, this tension was critical:
How do we introduce identity, payments, and third-party experiences into chat without breaking the intimacy that makes messaging work in the first place?
The challenge wasn’t adding features. It was making sure conversation still felt human, private, and effortless.
Approach
Designing Through Real Conversations
Rather than beginning with abstract frameworks or technical flows, we started with something tangible: screens. Chat is a space most people already understand, so the fastest way to learn was to design real interfaces and interact with them directly. By “playing” with screens early on, we could quickly sense what felt natural and what didn’t.
Our first explorations focused on familiar chat conventions, message bubbles, avatars, attachments, because these patterns carry strong user expectations. On top of that foundation, we carefully introduced World-specific elements such as identity signals and in-chat actions.
Once we had rough but usable MVP, we moved straight into internal testing. Designers, engineers, and teammates across World used the product as if it were real: starting conversations, sending payments, creating group chats, and deliberately pushing edge cases to see where the experience broke down.
As the experience became more refined, we shared working builds with a small group of potential users to validate our assumptions. The most valuable feedback wasn’t about features, it was about how the product felt: “I know who I’m talking to,” “I don’t hesitate before sending,” “This feels natural.” Those reactions became our benchmark for success.
Instead of trying to design a perfect system upfront, World Chat evolved through continuous hands-on testing. Real interactions guided each decision, allowing the product to take shape organically, one conversation at a time.
Results
From Talking to Doing
World Chat evolved into more than a messaging surface. It became a place where people could move from conversation to action with confidence. Sending money, splitting expenses, sending gifts or Mini Apps, coordinating with others, and interacting without friction or hesitation.
In its first two months, World Chat showed strong and sustained engagement beyond launch curiosity. The experience proved that trust can be established quickly through design alone, enabling users to understand who they were interacting with and feel comfortable taking action inside conversations.
Results from the first 2 months:
Activation Moment
Holiday Campaign. Turning Chat Into a Social Ritual
Learnings
Lessons Learned
Designing World Chat taught me that trust is something users read instantly through visual cues, hierarchy, and tone, not something that can be explained away with labels or instructions. I learned that conversation itself is one of the strongest UX patterns available: when actions happen inside chat, they feel intentional and human instead of transactional. Most importantly, I saw how much language shapes behavior at critical moments. When identity or money is involved, the right sentence, placed at the right time, can remove hesitation before doubt ever forms.
