What is Zoomie?
Zoomie is a social network celebrating animals. Create, watch, and share short videos of your beloved animals highlighting their silly loving nature and the joy they bring to your lives.
Role Overview
Solo product Designer. I collaborate with product managers, developers, marketing teams, and founders to develop product from scratch.
Impact on the Product
Contributed to coming up with the new design strategy to
appear in investor interest and successfully get invested
by Profound;
Established a new design process in a tight term, reduced 20-25% in design-development costs;
As the only designer who provided end-to-end product, I improved the user satisfaction rate from 41% to 66%.
Team Size
10-12 members
Empathize
Introduction
Market Background
This product was inspired by the overwhelming growing of short videos platforms. I’ve found out pretty fascinating this business and decided span common patterns according to target audience needs.
I’ve noticed that people were obsessing with a new high “short video” format. For instance, I took a highlights of most popular platform. As you may see, result was predictable.
Problem Statement
Whats Wrong?
To start with, I met with stakeholders, founders and marketings team. After some brainstorm meetings we came up with main idea and problem we want to resolve. Social media platforms thrive with short video format but not targeting any specific group.
The main problem was found, as a local business we want to split out exactly pet owners as a selected audience. I felt that was the perfect challenge and opportunity to try new something new on a market. Although I got perfect team to collaborate with.
Main Objectives
Develop a private community for pet owners.
Provide clear communication in the network.
Design engagement features for pet owners.
Let users create custom content to expand the network.
Define
Initial Survey
First of all, I wanted to gather basic info about customers. To accomplish this I created an online inquiry with Google Forms. It was a list of core questions. My main purpose was to find out concerns and goals in a particular way. Also, I conducted casual 15-minute interviews with a few people to get a sense of how they were feeling about a potential product.
Surveys and interviews let me assemble core JTBD. Also, I discovered 3 key pain points.
Initial survey results preview
Survey Findings
Favorite pet Dog & Cat
Most useful app YT Shorts
Desired feature Adoption
Premium Feature Ad-Free videos
User Interviews
I was able to take out some key points that allowed me to perceive user needs better. After user research my attention was preoccupied by the most interesting insight. That was the content creation flow. Afterward, I realized how important is to overcome common flows used by main competitors in a market. Thus I turned back to market research. I wrote out pain points simultaneously.
Interviews Findings
Users want to be able to create custom content. That includes video, photo, audio, and mixes.
Users want to be a part of community. Most of them mentioned that would be great to have a chat and some engaging features.
Users want to get access to the new features, such a AI photos, or some exclusive content.
Competitive Analysis
As a principal stage of research I manage competitor analysis of the leading short video platforms. My main goal was to figure out pros and cons of only content creation flow.
Some of the apps just blindly copied TikTok. As a result, I proposed to improve our UX and use some specific colors. These solutions would help us to be individual in a market.
Develop
Building Structure
Information Architecture
At this stage, I developed information architecture. Previous steps allow me to be more certain about pain points. I discussed with a team potential flows and how to avoid ux gaps. On the other hand main goal was to create a product agenda, and timeline, and split the whole app into release stages. By the time I designed architecture, I understood that MVP would consist of pain points flow and basics such as registrations or user profiles. Thus some of the features were abolished.
User Flows
One of the most crucial step is user flow. At this stage I asked users to describe how they prefer to watch content. To be more specific, I created a few user scenarios such as “Please find most recent videos relative to the baseball.
Also try to send a message to someone who would be relative to this type of sport”. I was able to learn most common user pattern and apply some of them to the new version of user flow. As a result, I built more efficient and accurate processes.
I used JTBD instead of personas. It’s more efficient because product already targeting selected group of people.
Mid Fi Mock Ups
At this stage main goal was to create wireframes for core flows. I got a plenty of a time to design prototype and test in on a certain group of people. Some of the insights shown a better way to overcome a key pain points. To be more efficient I provided particular user scenario described as JTBD. Although I spent some time at Usability Hub to get better results for user testing.
Core Features
Onboarding
Super nav allow you to switch between content type and engage more with the app. Also, adding tooltips help user quickly get on a new UX pattern.
At this case onboarding was essential to be smooth and easy for new users. I designed step-by-step guide on how to use super nav.
Clip and Voice
Clip settings was designed in order to provide simple and clear UX for post creation.
AI Portraits
To attract more users and improve the app, the goal was to create feature based on most popular algorithm. Inspired by Lensa I used AI portraits to focus some group of a customers on a visual side.
Personal Chatrooms
In addition to the previous pain point I created personal chatrooms. This feature provided certain way to communicate with a people. Adding personal chatrooms help customers to engage more with the app.
Deliver
Design System
Design system was created to save time and make product environment. I provide all of the main sides of design system such as typography, colors, components, icons, and dev guidelines. By creating design system I developed enhanced design process and robust design-develop cycle.
Outcome & Impact
The MVP was officially launched at the end of 2022. As a result, the product has grown to 15k users in a few weeks. Most of the users were satisfied and liked the app. Also, Zoomie was invested by Protofund as a potential product on the US market.
User testing round 2.0 preview
Direct communication is crucial. Our team was constantly sharing unique ideas, providing feedback, and learning from each other. We could always bounce off each others’ thoughts and come up with new ideas.
I got to explore a new market for myself. It was a new business for me and clear communication with product manager and marketing team allowed me to provide high develop design solutions.
User testing was conducted to save time and money for a business. Unfortunately I’m able to share insights for feed page only. Anyway it was important step to learn more about user patterns and UI improvements.
18.1 mins
Session duration
12.5K
Users were affected
84%
CSAT score
Next Steps
One of the most important step is to keep improving product. Based on a user testing I create a list of a potential features. I believe company will update an app according to it.
At this stage I polished design files, prepared documentation and shared my thoughts about future direction for design.
The product scaled up from MVP to a comprehensive platform with a lot of features. Also, after the launch founders gathered target audience to get a feedback. As a result company keep growing and attract new investors.
This product enhance my skills as a senior product designer. It was a great time to work on a local market with a team of professionals. The project showed how correct design process would affect on a developments efficiency.
Lessons
The product scaled up from MVP to a comprehensive platform with a lot of features. Also, after the launch founders gathered target audience to get a feedback. As a result company keep growing and attract new investors.
This product enhance my skills as a senior product designer. It was a great time to work on a local market with a team of professionals. The project showed how correct design process would affect on a developments efficiency.
