Lore:
Designing LLMs to Encourage Rabbit-Holing
TIMELINE
Summer 2025
TEAM
Bruce Cao
Karissa Wong
Gily Yu
ROLE
Founding Product Designer
SKILLS
Product Design
Motion Design
Prototyping
OVERVIEW
A 0-1 Product, 6 Weeks, 3 Designers, $10M Fund Raise
Lore was a pre-seed startup that grew out of the founders’ love for rabbit-holing—getting lost in a topic or fandom for hours. Their goal was to build an infrastructure-level platform for fan rabbit-holing.
We acted as Lore’s founding design team, transforming a vague vision for “magical rabbit-holing” into a clear product direction and high-fidelity prototypes.
These prototypes helped Lore successfully raise $10M during their seed round.
PROBLEM
The Rabbit-Holing Experience is Broken
The founders came to us convinced that the fan experience is fractured.
Rabbit-holing may start with a spark on social media, but digging deeper sends users bouncing between wikis, Reddit threads, videos, and scattered articles.
Users are constantly switching context, questioning authenticity, getting distracted, and losing momentum.
CHALLENGES
An Untraceable Journey
People currently jump between fragmented searches, wiki tabs, and Reddit threads, making it hard to retrace steps.
Respect The Rhythm of Discovery
User preferences for the length and format of information vary over the course of a rabbit-holing experience. Some sub-topics call for a 2-hour YouTube documentary, some sub-topics just require a simple summary to move forward.
Balance Facts, Theories, and Community Insight
Fans shift between wanting factual clarity, fan theories, and community sentiment at different moments. We needed a structure that supported diverse content types.
DESIGN HIGHLIGHTS
A Seamless Entry Point From Social Media
The Lore Companion brings your initial context directly into Lore, reducing fragmentation and allowing you to stay within one continuous rabbit hole.
Building in Passive Ways to Follow Up
Users can actively ask follow-up questions or passively extend content through simple interactions like dragging for more detail.
Tuning The Rhythm of Your Rabbit-holing
A built-in media converter lets users toggle between formats, such as turning a long text result into a precisely timestamped video explanation.
Integrating Moments of Fandom-Driven Debates
Battle Bars visualize reactions pulled from social and fan platforms, turning community debates into interactive prompts for deeper exploration.
OUTCOME
From Prototypes to $10M Seed Round
We delivered both low-fidelity mechanics and a high-fidelity, whimsical investor vision. Lore raised $10M in their seed round.
“This is the first time the Lore team has worked with folks who took our notes and delivered instantaneously—truly above and beyond.”