FUHH.IO: A Live Streaming App Where Viewers Change the Stream

Product Designer (UI/UX)

What I worked on

• The live viewing experience
• The challenge system and its rules
• Gifts and the virtual currency
• Streamer setup and broadcast controls
• Channel pages and discovery
• Live overlays and chat
• Layouts for desktop and phone

I wanted viewers to feel part of the stream, not just an audience in front of it.

The experience had to be

• Familiar to anyone who already watches Twitch or Kick
• Truly interactive, not passive
• Fun to take part in, not just to pay for
• Clear enough that new viewers get it straight away
• Flexible enough for streamers to set the difficulty

The goal wasn't more ways to spend money. It was making spending feel like joining in.

FUHH.IO entered a market already shaped by Twitch, Kick and Bigo Live.

On those platforms, interaction mostly goes one way. The streamer broadcasts, viewers watch, and the chat runs beside the video. Gifts exist, but they work like tips: an animation plays, a name scrolls by, and nothing about the stream changes.

FUHH.IO connects gifts to live challenges, so what the audience sends actually changes the stream.

The platform covers

• Live streams and channel pages
• Real-time chat and reactions
• Gifts and a virtual currency
• Time-based and interaction-based challenges
• Top gifter leaderboards
• A streamer dashboard and broadcast controls

I designed both sides end to end: what viewers see, and what streamers use to run their show.

Most streaming platforms try to drive engagement the same way: a chat box and a gift animation.

That leads to the same problems again and again

• Viewers have no real influence on the stream
• Gifting feels like paying, not taking part
• Smaller streamers struggle to create memorable moments
• Chat goes quiet during slow parts
• New viewers have no reason to stay

Without something to do together, an audience drifts, and the stream turns into background noise.

I needed to give the audience something real at stake, without turning the stream into a paywall.

I turned gifting from a tip jar into the engine of a live challenge.

Before a challenge goes live, the streamer sets

• A target: how many gifts the audience needs to send
• A time limit: how long they have to reach it
• A consequence: what happens if they miss

Gift Rush Hour shows how it works. The streamer sets a gift target to keep the stream in full quality. If viewers miss it in time, the stream drops to SD until they reach the target again. The streamer sets the difficulty, and the audience decides the outcome.

There are two kinds of challenge

• Time challenges: a countdown with a target to reach before it ends
• Interaction challenges: goals reached by taking part, like chat activity, reactions or several viewers gifting together

How I designed them

• The challenge is always visible, without covering the stream
• Progress can be read at a glance
• The consequence is explained in plain words before it starts
• Setup is quick enough to start in the middle of a stream
• Every challenge type uses the same pattern, so new ones feel familiar

Every gift became a move in a game the whole room is playing.

I started by studying how the big platforms lay out a stream, and where interaction lives.

I looked closely at

• Where the player and chat usually sit
• How gifts and donations are shown
• How crowded the screen gets at busy moments
• How leaderboards and recognition work
• What changes between desktop and phone

What stood out

• Familiar layouts are strong and worth keeping
• Gift moments are loud but over in seconds
• Recognition matters more to gifters than the animation
• Audiences get most involved when something is at stake

The most useful insight: viewers don't want more buttons. They want a reason to press the ones that are already there.

So instead of adding more interface, I focused on adding real consequences.

Then I dug into what actually makes viewers join in, and where they stop.

What I found

• Shared goals get people involved more than personal rewards
• Seeing progress makes people want to contribute
• Unclear consequences make people hold back
• Recognition keeps people gifting longer than animations do
• Too many prompts, and people ignore all of them

Timing mattered as much as the mechanics. A challenge during a quiet moment brings the stream back to life. The same challenge during a busy moment just fights for attention.

The best interaction builds momentum together, instead of one person spending alone.

The hardest problem was fitting everything on one screen.

The video, chat, gift feed, leaderboard and the live challenge all compete for space, and all of them update in real time. With only a month, I couldn't explore a direction, throw it away and start again, so I had to explore and decide at the same time.

Other things I had to balance

• Making consequences feel real without punishing viewers who can't spend
• Keeping setup fast enough to run mid-stream
• Keeping every stage of a countdown easy to read
• Fitting the same system into a much smaller phone screen
• Covering both viewer and streamer screens within the month

Urgent but clear. That balance was the hardest part of the project.

I explored several ways a challenge could look and behave before choosing one.

Every choice came back to one rule: keep the challenge readable without stealing attention from the stream.

New challenge types would keep coming, so I designed a structure they could slot straight into.

This included

• One challenge card and setup window that every type reuses
• Shared progress, countdown and target pieces
• Consistent gift and currency elements
• Clear rules for which overlay sits on top
• One color system for active, at-risk and failed states
• Text sized to stay readable over moving video

A new challenge type became a setup task, not a redesign.

The final design keeps the streaming layout people already know, and builds the interaction into it carefully.

Key decisions

• The familiar player and chat layout, kept intact
• A top gifter leaderboard where everyone can see it
• The challenge always in the same spot on the player
• Streamer controls one tap away during a broadcast
• Gifting without leaving the stream
• A phone layout with the same priorities in less space

Keep attention on the stream, and make joining in effortless.

On FUHH.IO, the audience has a direct, visible effect on the stream.

Because gifts are tied to goals everyone can see, spending becomes something the room does together. Viewers who don't spend still take part through chat and reaction challenges, so the audience stays one group instead of splitting into payers and watchers.

The challenge framework also gives the team a repeatable way to launch new mechanics without rebuilding the interface.