Letterboxd

Good concept, missing the loop

I use Letterboxd regularly. It has one of the most passionate communities in consumer tech and the core concept, a social network built around film, is genuinely good. But as a daily user, the gaps are hard to ignore. The home exists but is not built as a feed. There is no social layer on reviews. Recommendations are absent despite years of taste data. The profile shows numbers but does not reflect who you are as a film person.

No client, no brief, no constraints. Just a designer who uses the app and knows exactly what is missing.

What a daily user notices

Starting from my own experience and App Store reviews, I mapped what was frustrating and what was missing. The problems split into two categories: surfaces that exist but do not work as feeds, and social mechanics that simply are not there.

Key insights

The home gets two tabs: Friends and For You. Friends shows what your network has reviewed recently, with the review excerpt and quick actions inline. For You surfaces trending films and personalised picks. The bottom nav is also redesigned: Home, Search, Add, Activity, Profile, with a clear primary action always reachable.

Search becomes a discovery surface. Beyond the search bar, it now shows Trending now, New from friends (films your network recently logged), and a recommendations section based on your taste. "Because you liked Before Sunrise" surfaces films similar to what you have rated highly. This is the feature that makes users feel the app knows them.

The logging flow keeps your recent searches visible so returning to something you were considering is immediate. The logging screen itself gains more depth: a love button alongside the star rating, tags for cataloguing your entries, and toggles for rewatched, contains spoilers, and allow replies. Small additions that make the core ritual more personal and more useful.

Reviews gain a full social layer. A comments section lets users reply to each other directly. Likes and a bookmark action are always visible. A share button makes it easy to send a review outside the app. Status pills (Watched, Rate) give context at a glance. These are the actions that turn a review from a private note into a conversation.

The profile is rebuilt around identity. A favorites section lets you pin the films that define your taste. An annual goal with a progress bar makes the habit of watching visible and motivating. Recent activity shows your last logs with posters. Tabs for Profile, Diary, Films, and Lists organise everything without hiding it. The diary tab gives a clean chronological view of everything you have watched, by month.

From passive log to active platform

This is not a visual refresh. Turning the home into a feed, making reviews social, and using taste data for recommendations is a shift in what the product does. From something you open when you remember a film to something you check every day because there is always something to see.