Launched Reddit Comments UX with Community Advocates

This case study was created from an episode of the Product Marketing Adventures Podcast. It has been adapted into Dusted's case study format to preserve and showcase the guest's real-world experience. Written to preserve the voice of the true author, Kaavya Gupta.

I lead a product marketing team at Reddit focused on building meaningful consumer experiences—helping anyone find and participate in relevant conversations and communities, and making those experiences accessible globally. The comment section is what people come to Reddit for; it’s where all the Redditor knowledge lives. Last year we shipped a set of foundational updates to the comments experience: faster comment loading and performance improvements, new navigational UX to make it easier to reach comments, and consistent flows in and out of the comment section regardless of whether someone was viewing a text, image, or video post. Going in and out of comments from the main feed is a core user journey, so these individual efforts were all aimed at making Reddit the best in the world at conversations.

Any update to that core comments flow could make or break the experience for users. We needed the changes to land well with the community and to secure genuine buy-in. Rather than launching several small features in isolation, we had to find a way to package them so their cumulative value was clear—while still staying authentic to how Redditors actually discover and trust information (through their communities, not top-down brand messaging).