01 — PROJECT INTRO
INTRIGUE
Digital Product · Milan · 2023–2025
A social communication experiment turned into a real digital product, built around one idea: making one-to-one communication more intentional.
03 — EDITORIAL TEXT
Context and challenge
Intrigue started from a different question: what if slowing the interaction down could make it more meaningful?
The challenge was to turn this simple idea into a real product. A mobile app where an image becomes a puzzle, and receiving a message becomes an experience rather than just another notification.
The work involved moving from concept to product: defining the experience, shaping the UX and UI, developing new modes and features, and continuously testing how the original idea could work in the real world.
05 — MY CONTRIBUTION
What Cristiano made happen
I worked as Senior Product Designer, connecting product thinking, UX/UI and creative direction throughout the evolution of the app.
My role included shaping the user experience, designing interfaces and flows, developing new premium features, working on the virtual currency wallet and supporting testing and UAT.
The most important part of the work was protecting the original idea while helping it become a product people could actually use. Moving constantly between concept, experience, business logic and execution.
07 — BEHIND THE SCENES / KEY MOMENT
When the idea met the product
The original concept was simple: send an image, turn it into a puzzle, and let the recipient discover the message by solving it.
But a simple idea does not automatically create a simple product.
Every new feature created new questions about the experience, the interface, the rules and the business model. The product had to remain intuitive while becoming richer and more sustainable.
This was the real work: understanding which layers added value, which created friction and how to keep the experience emotionally engaging without making it unnecessarily complicated.
09 — WHAT I LEARNED
A reflection
Intrigue reinforced something I had already learned through other projects: product development is not a straight line from idea to execution.
A good concept needs to survive contact with users, technology, business constraints and real-world decisions.
The challenge is not simply to defend the original idea. It is to understand how it needs to evolve without losing the reason it existed in the first place.
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