Design Stack
I'm
UI / UX
Designer
Tech Stack
I'm
Front-End
Engineer
Built Under Pressure
I'm
Rapid
Prototyper
Winner
Hackathon x 3
Ideathon x 1
Highlights
I'm
Indie
Builder
App of the Day
Apps We Love
Featured Apps x4
Saim Emre Sahiner
Design Engineer
My Little Story v1
Hello
,
I'm
Emre.
Ten years of building mobile & web products taught me this: disruptive UX doesn’t change behavior, it changes how it feels.
The future of social media will be built on that idea.
This site is where I begin exploring how to make it real with Pika.
Why?
Why send a portfolio when I can build one that actually works.
Prospect Theory says people take take bolder, more unexpected choices when the risk and reward rise.
I think I felt that.
I didn’t plan to make this.
I just kept building until it felt like
the right way to say hello.
Part 1: My Story
For ten years, I’ve designed and built over 25 digital products for clients on mobile and web.
But today, I want to talk about the things I’ve built on my own. The ones I made freely, out of curiosity, and simply because I wanted to create.
2018
I was fascinated by a science community called Evrim Ağacı, followed by over 4 million people.
They were creating amazing content to make science more accessible, but I felt it could be experienced better.
I reached out and offered to build their mobile app as a gift.
My goal wasn’t to redesign it.
It was to make people feel the
impact of science more deeply.
And it worked.
Evrim Ağacı — App Store, Day 30 Reviews
2018: Laf.
Later that year, at 3 a.m., I started building Laf.
A micro social networking and creativity platform for poetry lovers.
Featured article by an Apple Editor
Each poem had a color.
Each user chose one that matched their mood.
A small ML model connected them.
People still read poems the same way, but they felt them differently.
Changing the feeling worked again.
Startup Days
In 2020, at 25, I founded my first startup, Beynex.
It used short daily games to collect cognitive data and help people build healthier habits.
Most products in this field relied on fear. We built ours around trust.
Two years later, one of our oldest users, an 84-year-old named Ismail, called me and said:
“Emre, Beynex helps with my loneliness. The daily tasks make me feel safe.”
It worked again.
Back to Basics
In 2025, after four intense years in the startup world, I went back to basics.
I wanted to build again, freely and instinctively, guided by how things felt rather than how they looked.
That summer, I analyzed a thousand posts from Reddit’s cocktail communities and built Neat Cocktail in three weeks.
The community loved it.
By week four, it was acquired.
Next came Blue Dot.
It was an old sketch from my notebook, a calm trip planner for people who wanted to slow down.
When I shared the first visuals on Twitter, they went viral.
Maybe we were all looking for the same calm.
What remains are dozens of lessons and small clues about understanding people and designing for how they feel.
Pika Moment
Everything was going well.
I had just started sharing what I was building,
and it was already getting attention.
Expo sent gifts to thank me for supporting them. New followers came in. More job offers followed.
All of it was exciting, but none of it compared to one message.
The idea of joining the Pika team was genuinely exciting.
Chenlin’s message, and her asking me to send my portfolio, truly honored me.
But there was one line that caught my attention even more:
At @pika_labs, we’re building
the future of AI video and social media.
…the future of social media.
This isn’t just a design or engineering challenge.
It’s a sociological, psychological, and cognitive behavior challenge.
A black hole that has swallowed countless talented teams before.
And it’s worth every hour you can give.
End of Story.
At this point in the story, I spent the next ten days reading, researching, and thinking about that one line.
While thinking about Pika, I tried to imagine myself as its CPO, trying to see things from the inside.
Now let’s look at what we have and what I can do for Pika.
Pika: Q3 Report
Dear Chenlin and Demi,
For almost three years, we’ve been turning a shared vision into reality.
The technology we’ve built continues to inspire what the future of social media could become.
On July 22, we launched our new app in beta.
Although the feedback has been positive, we’re still
facing a high churn rate.
I’ve spent time digging into why that might be happening.
Now, I believe I can feel where we should go next and how to truly set ourselves apart.
Best, Emre.
- Pika CPO in a parallel universe
Good News
Pika’s current technology is more than enough to become the next “social media.”
Bad News
The current product has some serious fundamental issues.
If these aren’t fixed, it’s almost impossible to bring the 30-day churn rate below 90–95%.
One thing to note before the core problems.
The human brain reacts differently when it "knows" the content it is consuming is not real.
This is something traditional social platforms have never faced, but soon they will. Even when we think we are not affected, our brains already know the difference. I have read dozens of studies about this, but here are two I would like to share.
Source 2: A funny companion: Distinct neural responses to perceived AI- versus human-generated humor
No matter what we do, we need to revisit everything we know about best practices. What once worked may no longer work. And what once failed might now give us an advantage.
Now look at these three apps. What do you see?
Sona 2 by OpenAI
Pika Trend Maker
Vibes by Meta
“I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
When Miyazaki said these words eight years ago, his tone was harsh, I admit. But what he meant can still guide anyone who wants to shape "the future of social media".
We should hear him.
The five-star reviews mostly come from loyal users who already love Pika.
This one matters more. It speaks for the majority.
When I look at these apps, I see engineers shouting, “Look at our cutting-edge spaceship!”
But no one cares about the spaceship. (technology)
The real excitement is in going to space. (content, context)
That’s why everyone knows Neil Armstrong’s name (influencers), but no one remembers the engineers.
That’s human nature, and it’s going to stay that way for a while.
Problems: Consumer Perspective (99% of Users)
Social media is a place of consumption, not creation, for 99% of its users.
(see: the 90–9–1 rule)
No one really wants to make videos. Everyone wants dopamine.
P1: Centering AIGC as the core of the brand identity.
P2: Lack of context in the creation process. The videos look great, but they lack a clear context or emotional thread. Without that, everything starts to feel repetitive and disconnected.
P3: As a result of the 2nd issue, we lose the wow effect.
Even worse, users no longer feel like they are watching something “new” when they return to the app.
That makes retention extremely difficult.
In short, there is nothing to "consume" in Pika Trend Maker, only impressive videos.
Experiment #0001
Created a new Pika account.
Remixed the most popular videos.
Added no dialogue or voiceover.
Results: 1 likes, 0 comments, 0 followers.
Experiment #0002
Created another new Pika account.
This time, built a simple character who tells random jokes and observations. Gave it a context.
Results: 16 likes, 3 comments, 8 followers.
Problems: Creator Perspective (1% of Users)
P1: Lack of Motivation
If you look at the top content creators on any major social platform, almost 90% treat it as a full time or part time job.
When we ask our creators for the same level of effort, we must also provide the same kind of motivation such as money, visibility or influence.
P2: No Guidance in the Creation Process
Successful content platforms always gave early guidance.
Users quickly understood the context in which they should create, but our app lacks this. Before giving full creative freedom, we need to offer clear, human centered direction.
Not filters or templates, but context that connects to real moments such as: "Videos about the new Trump law are trending today. What’s your take?"
P3: The Tool Perception
Sora 2 is currently facing this exact problem.
At a glance, most of the content made with Sora ends up being shared on other social platforms because that is where the engagement lives.
We must rethink our UX to move beyond being just a tool.
Our recommendation algorithm will play a key role in solving this.
Summary
I know everything I’ve shared so far might feel like watching a film in 360p. But I’m sure that within six months, through everything we’ll discover together, we’ll be watching it in 4K clarity.
At its core, what we really need to do is understand people and find where we truly fit in their lives.
What
Comes Next
Dear Chenlin and Demi,
Back to reality, I know this probably wasn’t what Chenlin expected when she sent me that message. This started as a way to share my portfolio, and here we are. I had a lot of fun building this site, and I hope you enjoyed going through it too.
Every bit of success and experience I have came from having the courage to step outside the standard and think freely.
It is simply the only way I know how to work.
Even from 6,600 miles away, in a completely different culture and reality, I am confident I can help create something irresistible.
A product that people cannot stop using, and that competitors will race to imitate.
I am only asking for two things.
Six months.
The first ten weeks for research and discovery, the rest for prototypes and testing.
A fixed project budget.
My main motivation for this project is not financial.
However, if we work together, I will pause all my other work and dedicate 10 to 14 hours a day fully to this project, which means I will need a steady income during this period.
In addition, I plan to run several small but essential activities such as interviews with content creators and influencers, meetings with university students, and on-site user research. To support this, I also plan to form a small thinking team of three to four young people.
What I am confident I can give back to Pika is a set of prototypes for the next social media, real, functional, tested, and deeply rooted in a true understanding of the user.
That is it.
If you are interested, I would love to send a detailed six month project plan explaining exactly what I want to build for Pika.
It has been an honor to receive this message and to share this with you. Thank you for your time.
Whether we work together or not, I will still be rooting for Pika
and its dream of becoming the future of social media.
Warmly,
Emre.
Please open this site on your laptop or desktop computer.
I didn’t have time to make it mobile-friendly :(