- Specimen
- Poemeet
- Category
- Product Design / Social App / Poetry Game
- Launch
- April 2026
- Modes
- Word Blocks / Chaos Poem
- Languages
- Traditional Chinese / English / Japanese
- Role
- Solo Product Creator / UX / UI / Frontend / Backend / Launch
Poemeet
“A place where souls recognize each other.”
Poemeet is one of my clearest examples of turning an abstract idea into a structured product. I was not trying to build another swipe-based matching app. I was trying to build a space where strangers move closer by creating something together.
It combines matching, poetry, playful pacing, and social-safety systems into one product. Instead of starting from photos, users begin with scent-based profiling, system matching, and then co-create through either Word Blocks or Chaos Poem.
One of Poemeet’s clearest differentiators is that it does not begin with interests, hobbies, or swipeable self-description. It begins with a Scent Test: a set of subtle, emotionally textured prompts designed to map someone through sensory preference, relational boundaries, and modes of companionship.
The prompts are intentionally delicate. Instead of asking "what do you like?", Poemeet asks questions like "What kinds of sensory experiences make you feel especially alive?" The answers might include a dim room on a rainy day, the mixed smell of roasted chestnuts and smoke at a night market, or the warmth of old wooden furniture. Other prompts ask what someone fears and longs for in a relationship, or what ideal companionship looks like: doing separate things while knowing the other person is nearby, or sharing quiet without needing many words.
What I designed here was not just feature placement, but the structure of how a relationship begins. Registration, language preference, matching logic, room flow, and unlock timing all work as one narrative system.
The first core mode is Word Blocks. Two people take turns composing lines from suggested word fragments. The point is not freeform text, but a gentle constraint system that helps strangers create rhythm together from the beginning.
The second core mode is Chaos Poem. Players alternate between drawing and guessing across eight rounds, and the results are then placed into a poem framework. It is a good example of how I treat surprise, distortion, and emotional residue as product materials rather than design flaws.
Although these modes look very different, they solve the same problem: how to move strangers from awkwardness into meaningful exchange. Word Blocks uses rhythm and constraints. Chaos Poem uses play and productive misalignment.
I also built the surrounding product system: the AI poet Mist, Poemeet Pro, cross-language creation, message-board unlocks, notifications, moderation, blacklists, room limits, plaza publishing, and the timing of when image exchange should become available.
Many of the important decisions in Poemeet live in invisible layers: room limits shared across modes, cross-language Chaos Poem gates, public-plaza logic, block-state transitions, and carefully timed unlocks.
I also built the project independently end to end: concept, product rules, information architecture, interface design, frontend, backend structure, multilingual content, subscriptions, notifications, launch, and public-facing pages.
Poemeet is not a dating app with poetry added on top.
It is a redesign of how connection begins, using rhythm, play, and co-creation as the medium.
This specimen belongs to
