Work / Vocal
New creator support features for writers
Vocal is a content creation and publication platform for long-form writing, aimed at providing a creative space for writers to hone their craft. This was my one of my first end-to-end design projects where I got to be involved from early exploratory research to delivery.
Problem
Vocal's writing challenges attracted a significant amount of paid subscribers, motivated to win prizes and earn money through reads and tips. However, the platform was seeing a high rate of churn among paid subscribers of about 62% across all time.
Outcome
Following insights from users, we introduced a new subscription tier, Vocal Pro, for advanced monetisation tools and new global features that improved content discovery and enhanced community connections. The strategic suite of new feature contributed towards increased engagement on the platform among all Vocal users.
On this project, I collaborated within a large team comprising 5 designers and 3 developers, with project leaders managing most engagement with our client.
Skip to Solution
Research
Our initial understanding of the challenges faced by Vocal writers stemmed from my early analysis of user-submitted reviews. A significant pain point emerged: the difficulty in growing a significant readership to offset the membership cost, frequently leading to subscription cancellations.
To gain first-hand insight into this issue, we personally tested the reader experience. This revealed a somewhat unengaging interaction, characterized by one-sided actions such as liking, tipping, and following. These initial explorations sparked key questions regarding writers' platform usage and their unmet needs.
Mixed methods approach
We employed a sequential mixed-methods research approach, starting with quantitative data collection followed by qualitative exploration. This allowed us to first establish the scale of user attitudes and motivations through a broad survey before delving deeper into the nuances of their experiences through focused discussions.
We conducted a comprehensive survey of 3,000 Vocal users to measure several key aspects:
- Motivations behind signing up or sharing content
- Their usage of Vocal as a creator
- Their usage of Vocal as a reader
- Attitude towards the ability to receive ongoing financial contributions from dedicated readers
All questions utilised a multiple choice format to facilitate efficient analysis.
Notably, I included a question about the frequency of assistive technologies usage which yielded a surprisingly high rate of affirmative responses. Recognizing the potential implications, we prioritized support for screen readers and other assistive technologies in our subsequent design considerations.
Based on survey responses, we recruited a representative group of Vocal users to zero in on their survey responses.
With 2-3 participants per remote session, we shared idea vignettes for content monetisation and what creator support could look like. Participants voted and discussed their most and least favourite creator support feature ideas, as represented by coloured dots below.
Personas on a motivation-goals spectrum
Based on trends in motivations and goals, we mapped creator persona types along a spectrum, noting that most professional writers on Vocal followed a similar path from hobbyist to serious.
Their motivation correlated positively with the intensity of their goals to earn money, improve their writing and amplify their audience.
Key actionable insights
Our research culminated in key creator support themes that directly shaped the final strategy. These insights provided a clear understanding of the core needs of Vocal creators:
Equip creators with a suite of monetisation tools
57% of surveyed participants selected “I was interested by the ability to earn money from my writing and wanted to give it a go” when asked what brought them to Vocal. This was the most selected response. While to varying degrees,all creator types were interested in content monetisation.
Enable ease of content discovery
All creators recognised that an engaged readership was necessary to earn money from their content.Participants voiced that the reading experience on Vocal could be a lot better, suggesting for an app specifically as many preferred to read articles on mobile.
Enhance community connections for creators
50% of Vocal users said thar their motivation for writing was to grow their skill. For a majority of creators,feedback through actual words was the most valuable form of support as a writer.
Wireframes
The lead UX designer led us through digital whiteboard sketching sessions to generate ideas based on user insights around our creator support themes.
Many of the ideas we had were inspired directly by user feedback such as exclusive access to monetised content or grouped content on creator profiles. These highl-level sketches, known as functional wireframes at Thinkmill, were helpful to communicate the functionality we envisioned for the product. It was also useful for early alignment on priorities.
When it came to UI designs, moving from wireframe to prototype went fairly quickly since there was an existing design system. If design exploration was needed, we jumped on Zoom to discuss the pros and cons of layouts while sketching on a digital whiteboard.
With boxes and arrows, we were able to quickly discuss different ideas and move forward with the design process.
Prototypes
Design and delivery spanned about 2-3 months. This involved a full platform refactor and the implementation of an updated design system, which provided a cohesive foundation for a series of new feature releases for both free and paid Vocal members:
Creator profiles with a new look and pledges
A new subscription tier was introduced, targeted at professional-level creators, to earn ongoing tips which we called "pledges". The pledges feature was designed to provide a direct and ongoing donation option for dedicated readers, with the ability to scale into a creator's own membership program to share exclusive content.
Aside from the final UI, one notable contribution of mine was suggesting the name "pledge." This was informed by the existing mental model on other creator platforms and conveniently distinguished the action from "subscribe" and "tip" to ensure clarity for users.
Pinned stories
We enhanced content discovery on creator profiles through the implementation of pinned top stories and an interactive tag carousel that automatically categorised stories. Both updates were designed to intuitively guide new readers through a creator's diverse portfolio. We settled on the interactive tag carousel based on data indicating that Vocal creators frequently wrote across a variety of genres, and we wanted to prominently showcase their breadth of work to potential readers.
Constructive feedback through reader insights
To enrich the reading experience and foster constructive engagement, we developed "Reader Insights".This feature was designed for readers to provide structured feedback by selecting from a curated list of constructive options. On this feature, I was responsible for curating the feedback selection, crafting the copy, and choosing the icons. Tied to their story statistics, creators reported appreciating the additional depth these insights provided through automated reporting.
Enhance community connections through comments
The positive reception of the "Insights" feature gave the team confidence to proceed with the implementation of "Comments." While initial concerns existed regarding moderation efforts, the overwhelming popularity of "Comments" upon release underscored the effectiveness of our user-centred design approach in addressing a significant community need. It became the most popular feature release on Vocal to date.
Key Takeaways
As a designer, this project was so exciting as it marked my first end-to-end involvement in a large-scale project. It was incredible to see how initial hypotheses evolved into tangible features that resonated with users. On future projects with high ambiguity, I will absolutely continue to advocate for direct user engagement to identify core motivations and needs. The staggered release of features also gave us valuable feedback in the form of user reception and adoption.
The early participation of engineers in the research process enhanced collaboration. Engineers attended focus group sessions, with a target of at least 70% attendance to mitigate potential bias. As a result, the design and delivery process felt more synchronized due to our shared understanding of creator needs. Their contributions during ideation and feedback sessions, particularly regarding UX designs, fostered a strong sense of teamwork throughout the project.
Reflecting on this project, completed in 2022 before the widespread adoption of AI, I'm incredibly curious about how our research and validation approaches might differ today. While AI is now commonly applied in research for synthesis and insight generation, a potential drawback of automating this task (beyond the risk of bias) could be the loss of what made this project so successful: a deep sense of user understanding.