Kindred — Collaboration Layer
Creative work was already happening inside Dropbox, but reviews, feedback, and assignments still lived across Slack threads and scattered messages.
I explored what it could look like if collaboration stayed attached to the work itself instead.
The goal was to help creative teams manage active work without turning Dropbox into another project management tool.
The problem started after the file was shared
Uploading files into Dropbox wasn't really the issue.
The problems usually started once the file started moving between people.
Someone shares it in Slack. Feedback happens in a meeting. Another version gets uploaded later.
At some point somebody asks:
Or:
A lot of the workflow depended on people checking in with each other manually just to understand what was happening around a file.
That became the part I wanted to design around.
I started with a pretty simple review system
The first version focused mostly on visibility.
Files moved through lightweight states like Draft, In Review, Final, and Approved. I also started adding more context directly onto the cards so people could quickly see:
At first, it felt helpful because everything was visible.
But over time, the cards became harder to scan at a glance.
The more information I added, the harder it became to answer:
That’s when I started removing things again.
A lot of the workflow disappeared once you left the file
While working on the dashboard, I noticed a lot of smaller updates disappeared once you switched context.
Recent comments, active reviews, ownership changes, and unanswered questions all became harder to track once you left a file.
At first I thought notifications could handle it, but notifications felt too temporary for this kind of information.
Instead, I added a side panel directly into the user's dashboard.
It gave smaller updates a persistent place to live without crowding the main workspace.
Assignment became more complicated than reviews
Originally, the workflow assumed files would move directly from one person to another.
That worked for smaller teams, but the more I thought about larger organizations, the less realistic it felt.
A lot of the time, people don’t actually know who should review something yet but they only know which team owns it.
Instead of assigning work directly to individuals, files could first enter a shared team queue before ownership became clearer internally.
The hardest part was deciding what belonged in the workspace
A lot of the project stopped being about adding new features and became more about deciding what actually needed to be there.
Some ideas technically solved the problem, but they also made the workspace heavier very quickly.
The more useful direction ended up being much smaller.
Instead of trying to manage entire projects, the workspace became more focused on keeping reviews, ownership, and active work visible in one place.