Internet Decides
- Startup
Bringing the Internet’s Opinions to Life—A Social Polling Revolution
Internet Decides is a social polling platform that lets anyone create and vote on polls without signing up. Think of it as a fusion between Twitter Polls & Quora, where curiosity meets structured public opinion. The goal? To make polling as effortless as liking a tweet while ensuring meaningful data collection. Users can create polls, browse trending topics, and engage in discussions—all while businesses can leverage polls for market insights. As a Co-founder & Product Designer, I led the UX strategy, user research, wireframing, and visual design, ensuring the platform was simple, engaging, and scalable. Within the first month, we saw 500+ users, a 40% engagement boost, and reduced user acquisition costs by 20%. This case study breaks down the entire journey—problem-solving, design decisions, iterations, and learnings.
Role
Co-founder
Product Designer
Team
Milan Kansagara – CF, PM
Harsh Bhalala – CF, FSD
Timeline
Mumbai, India
March 2022 - April 2023
Tools
Figma, Google Analytics, Firebase, Flutter
Poll Creation Process
A simple, intuitive flow that allows users to create polls effortlessly in just a few taps.
Trending Polls Feed
A dynamic, algorithm-driven feed that surfaces the most engaging polls in real time.
Anonymous Polling Option
Users can create and vote anonymously, ensuring unbiased participation.
Poll Analytics & Results
A clean, data-driven results page providing insights on how people voted.
Ad-Campaigns for Businesses
Businesses can create ad campaigns and display their ad banners on poll pages to reach a highly engaged audience.
The rise of digital engagement, smartphone adoption, and online data consumption made interactive content like polls more relevant than ever.
The numbers spoke for themselves:
Smartphone users grew from 0.8 billion (2011) to 6.2 billion (2021).
Internet users increased from 2.5 billion to 5 billion in the same period.
Google searches doubled from 3 billion per day to 6 billion per day.
With users becoming increasingly reliant on instant, interactive content, polls offer an untapped opportunity to engage audiences meaningfully. Businesses also recognize the power of quick decision-making based on real-time public sentiment, making this the perfect time for a platform like Internet Decides.
Polling existed on many platforms, but there was no dedicated place where people could browse, vote, and discuss structured public opinion.
Users Want Quick, Structured Insights
Currently, polling is an isolated feature on platforms like Twitter & Reddit, meaning there’s no discovery mechanism beyond direct sharing.
Market Research is Expensive
Businesses pay hefty amounts for survey data. Polling, if designed well, could provide structured data at scale.
No Central Polling Hub
Right now, if you want to see what the internet thinks about a topic, where do you go? There’s no answer to that.
Short-lived, lacks visibility beyond followers
Short-lived, lacks visibility beyond followers
Unstructured, hard to find past polls
Unstructured, hard to find past polls
Subjective, lacks structured polling
Subjective, lacks structured polling
As someone who has always been fascinated by how people express their opinions online, I noticed a recurring pattern:
“Polls exist, but they’re buried as secondary features”
✓ Twitter polls disappear in feeds
✓ Reddit polls lack structure, and
✓ Businesses spend huge sums for traditional surveys.
What if polls were an independent product? What if users could browse and engage with polls like a social feed? What if companies could leverage polls for actionable insights at a fraction of the cost of surveys?
Compared to other text-based social networks, polls offer a unique way to extract meaningful, structured data effortlessly. Instead of long-form discussions, they provide quantifiable insights quickly.
How Internet Decides Stands Out
Structured Data
Unlike open-ended discussions, polls provide easier trend identification and pattern recognition.
Customizable Targeting
Businesses can tailor polls to specific audiences for relevant and informative insights.
Interactive & Engaging
More user participation compared to passive content consumption on traditional platforms.
🎯 HYPOTHESIS & DESIGN PRINCIPLES
“If we build a simple, social polling platform that makes participation effortless, users will engage actively, and businesses will find value in structured insights.”
Simplicity First
Users should be able to create or vote on a poll in one click.
Trust & Transparency
Open polling, visible results, no paywalls for viewing data.
Engagement & Discoverability
A feed of trending polls, commenting, and sharing features.
Efficiency for Businesses
A way for brands to leverage public opinion.
🗒️ VALIDATING THE PROBLEM
To validate the problem Internet Decides aimed to solve, we looked at real-world scenarios where polling provided actionable insights. These cases illustrate the power of structured, high-engagement polls in decision-making and their potential when backed by demographic and analytical data.
A simple poll can lead to valuable product insights. One of the most interesting real-world applications of polling was when Mr. Doshi ran a poll settling an eternal debate:
"Which part of a samosa is better—the crust or the filling?"
✓
A D2C food brand, Samosa Party, leveraged the poll results to introduce a “crust-only” menu item, using real-time polling as a product validation tool.
✓
If businesses had access to demographic and geographic data from polls, they could refine product decisions, optimizing for localized demand.
Poll to Business Decision
Polling has the potential to shape critical business and platform decisions when conducted at scale. One of the most striking examples of this was seen when Elon Musk used a public Twitter poll to decide whether to reinstate former U.S. President Donald Trump’s account.
✓
The poll attracted over 15 million votes, demonstrating the power of engaged public polling.
"Vox Populi, Vox Dei" (The voice of the people is the voice of God)
✓
reinforcing how the poll directly influenced his decision.
✓
134 million people saw the poll, indicating how a simple voting mechanism can drive massive engagement and reach.
This use case underscores that structured polling isn’t just an engagement tool.
—it can drive high-stakes decisions at a global scale.
While Twitter's built-in poll feature allowed users to vote, it lacked demographic insights, geographic breakdowns, and sentiment analysis, all of which Internet Decides could have provided to enhance data-driven decision-making.
This case, alongside the Poll to Product example, showcases the versatility of polling as a
—whether for consumer-driven product launches or critical business decisions.
🍥 EARLY IDEATION & DESIGN THINKING
Brainstorming Different Approaches
I explored multiple approaches for various features before settling on the final concepts. Early design ideas included:
A search engine-style polling system where users could query polls on any topic.
A social feed-based polling hub, surfacing trending polls algorithmically.
A polling dashboard for businesses, allowing them to track sentiment analysis.
Image-based polls
A way to increase engagement by allowing users to vote on images rather than just text-based options.
— We experimented with multiple ways to implement image polls, exploring different ways users could interact with them. Initially, I designed three variations of how image polls could be displayed, testing different layouts and visual engagement strategies.
Prototype showcasing the three different approaches to image polls.
After analyzing user feedback and usability tests, we decided to move forward with a design that provided a clean, grid-based layout with emphasis on visual clarity and ease of selection.
Prototype showcasing the final version we chose for image polls.
Finally, we refined the feature further to optimize it for mobile, ensuring a seamless experience across devices. The final version of image polls was adapted to a more responsive, mobile-friendly format, balancing usability with aesthetic appeal.
Wireframing & Prototyping
Moving from concept to wireframes, I created low-fidelity designs focused on:
A seamless poll creation process with minimal friction.
An interactive feed showcasing trending & relevant polls.
An analytics dashboard to help businesses track results.
🛠️ ITERATION & USER TESTING
Key User Feedback & Iterations
We conducted beta testing with early adopters and iterated based on real user feedback.
Users struggled with discovering past polls → We introduced a “Bookmarks” feature
People wanted an anonymous voting option → Added Anonymous Polling to encourage unbiased responses.
Advertisers wanted more visibility for sponsored polls → Integrated ad placements within relevant polls.
Ad placement in the poll page
Ad placement in the results filter overlay
Ad placement in the comments section
Internet Decides was a fully functional platform where users could:
✅
Create polls effortlessly with minimal steps.
✅
Browse trending polls and real-time voting insights.
✅
Engage in discussions & share results.
✅
Vote anonymously or publicly.
✅
Leverage ad-supported polling for business insights.
500+
authentic users generated in the first month after launch
40%
increase in engagement after UI improvements.
20%
user acquisition cost reduced by 20% through organic sharing
