Project Summary:
Client:
Maker Studios
Role(s):
UX Design
UI Design
Team:
2 UX Designers
2 PMs
7 Engineers
4 QA
Maker Studios’ Offers tool was purposefully designed to connect the world’s largest brands, like Pepsi and Disney, with Maker’s in-house talent for premium sponsorship deals. Each deal would typically require talent to complete specific tasks on their most popular platforms in exchange for payment. For instance, Disney may request all Instagram-specific influencers to create posts about their most memorable Disney experience and then pay them an agreed-upon rate for every fan interaction.
Offers was originally designed and launched in 2013, but by 2017 was in need of a complete redesign. Through collecting user feedback we determined that a redesign would need to focus on resolving specific pain points brought to light by talent and internal stakeholders regarding completion and overall participation in Offers. Unfortunately, the product experience was now impeding the growth and potential of such an innovative model.
The Maker UX team would tackle every sprint by designing high or low fidelity prototypes, testing with users, and refining designs based on their input. Then after aligning with Product, Engineering, and individual stakeholders, we would deliver final development-ready design to our engineering teams—all within a two week sprint cycle.
After sourcing talent to interview with our internal audience team, we strategically developed discussion guides to direct conversations around the current Offers tool and workflows. These were used as points of reference to gain understanding of their workflows and expose failures, pain points, and overall successes of the Offers tool and program.
StampyLonghead
6,452,653 Subscribers
Andrea’s Choice
3,403,906 Subscribers
Simply Bianca Alex
48,717 Subscribers
Swirl Girl Army
4,327 Subscribers
KelBridge
1,444 Subscribers
The previously mentioned discussions confirmed many of our assumptions and more importantly gave talent the opportunity to discuss their biggest pain points with the Offers tool. Some of these findings were very surprising and pushed our team to provide more value to talent with the overall redesign of Offers.
Usability Issues:
Maker Max was only used around once a week (avg 2.5 - 3 min)
Submission deadlines were always too confusing/unclear
Needed more detailed and strategic content KPIs
Ability to network with other Maker talent was too difficult
Lack of timely and meaningful notifications (logins, messages, alerts)
Analytics seem useful but confusing and hard to navigate
Expand Offers specific to social media platforms
Lack of data on social media (hashtags, engagement)
Lack for creative direction for supplementary art (typography, cover)
Trends are far too broad to define content strategy
Middle-Tier talent struggled to derive meaning from analytics. Suggested having group learning sessions with other talent to help each other with videos (intros, timing, transitions).
Need for a mentorship/talent development program
Product Value:
Confusion about description and submission
“The process to submit a pitch is chaotic...”
Requirements often stifle creativity
Way too many emails made the offer confusing
Offers were often not directed to the right talent
Overall requirements were confusing or not clear
No ability to access, participate, or complete on mobile devices. Only accessible from a desktop
Referred to competitor tools as an example of what would be ideal
Uploading videos and thumbnails was vague
Simply no other communication about open, applicable, or available Offers
For internal feedback collection, we heavily prioritized efficiency and being as frictionless as possible. This meant distributing surveys that teams could complete independently largely due to teams being so busy with daily operations that they simply could not afford to dedicate a few hours to a full discussion.
Business Owners
Team of 4
Internal Sales Team
Team of 20+
Top Talent MGMT
Support 20 Talent
Audience Team
Support 200 Talent
MakerGen MGMT
Support 60K Talent
In general, many of the pain points could be linked back to communication breakdowns, last minute changes to briefs, and lack of effort in one department would effect another's ability to execute further downstream. We soon realized that there would need to be much more then a product redesign, and that we would need to redesign how our organization creates and manages these offers, and how they support talent who choose to participate.
The redesign and launch of Offers was a major success that led to significant growth in participation (~70%) and completion (~38%) over the next 2 quarters. This was largely credited to it’s clean and minimal aesthetic that showcased each Offer’s requirements and potential earnings.
Unfortunately, this was only a
short-term success, as existing operational processes continued to interfere with the quality and clarity of Offers. After revisiting our research, it was determined that a native app would be best suited to address creator needs and resolve operational pain points. This led us to Maker’s Creator App.
Using Maker Max’s proprietary talent database (Creator Profiles) we were able to segment specific creators to use for our initial user testing, alpha, and beta phases.
Example Query:
Category: Life + Style
Vertical: Fashion & Beauty
Subscribers: 100K – 200K
Monthly Views: 200K – 300K
After creating very specific talent segments, we were able to develop generic user personas we could use to test against to validate or invalidate our assumptions.
We were then able to utilize the previously mentioned personas to deliver optional surveys directly to our talent and collect valuable feedback about their workflows, wants, and needs for our new native app concept. Through A/B testing and blind testing external users and internal users, to validate or disprove assumptions.
MVP Welcome Screens + Concepts
Here are a few iterations of our initial welcome screens along with our final MVP version. Some of the key findings we discovered through user testing were:
Value of the app is vague to new users
Onboarding process cumbersome
Existing Max users could confidently sign-up
MVP Offers Feed + Concepts
Here are a few iterations of our initial Offers Feed along with our final MVP version. Some of the key findings we discovered through user testing were:
Users lost focus due to information overload
Leverage color and/or imagery to promote information hierarchy
Needed a middle-ground between available Offers and personal statistics
MVP Onboarding Flow
This was our more streamlined approach to onboarding new and existing creators. Our primary goal was to correlate a creator’s reach with potential earnings via Offers to immediately inform and excite them . At the time, Facebook was the largest social media platform for many of our creators and so talent would be immediately prompted to link their Facebook account and begin participating in Offers.
MVP Instant Tasks
Here was our solution for reducing user errors when creating social media posts with rigid requirements. The most important part of these posts was to include accurate hashtags and links, so instead of giving creators a blank slate, we simply allowed them to write their own unique content, then simply tap the required hashtags to populate the correct hashtags.
MVP Linked Posts
This is our solution to one of the biggest challenges of bridging gaps between multiple apps. Our approach was to simplify the creation and and submission of content for creators by providing paths to completion and feedback.
Developing a living style guide for our engineering team was a critical decision we made early in the design process to ensure consistency throughout Maker Offers and Creator App. It included standardized UI components, typography, color schemes, spacing guidelines, and interaction patterns, all designed to streamline development. Providing code snippets and clear usage examples was intended to aid engineers in implementing handed off designs accurately and efficiently, reducing back-and-forth and ensuring the final product aligns perfectly with the vision. This ultimately saved time and also ensured a cohesive user experience across all devices.
