Creating a seamless viewing experience led a substantial product data increase
Product designer / 2021-2022
User goal:
Find and watch multiple videos on a related topic or genre efficiently, continuously, sometimes in a sequential order.
Solution:
Video collection, as a series of videos on a common theme.
Impact:
➊ Provided great experience in both watching and creating, as evidenced by data performance and qualitative research;
➋ Enriched product’s diversity and expanded our content pool.
My role:
As a senior product designer, I defined requirements, identified solutions, finalized specifications and jointly made product decisions collaborating with product managers.
As the project began, I collaborated closely with our interdisciplinary team to align our objectives and structured the project into 3 distinct phases, each aimed at achieving specific goals:
Unify
& Standardize
Unify the user interaction flow and design elements, roll out the winning variant from the A/B test for the collection watching experience.
Polish
& Enhance
Enhance strategies for better mental model building; improve functionality and refine product details to better support user goals.
Enrich
& Expand
Tailor the design for unique scenarios to help expand the collection across the entire app; create and expand the creator pool for collection creation.
I clarified the main objective with my project team:
Video collections encourage users to watch multiple related videos in a row by offering a curated, thematic experience, increasing their overall engagement with our product.
There were other stakeholders within Kuaishou who have developed similar theme-based content features according to my desk research.
Eg. KuaiTube Series / Machine-created MMU (Multi-Media Understanding) collections / Search Results Collections.
The key issue is: Experiences across scenarios built by different units within Kuaishou are NOT consistent.
Inconsistency 1. The UX pattern
Inconsistency 2. The layouts and assets
Inconsistency 3. The copywriting and information fields
My design goal:
Create a consistent and seamless user experience for the video collection across the entire Kuaishou platform.
To see the whole scope and establish a comprehensive foundation, I
➊ Analyze user needs
for understanding and laying touch points
➋ Develop mind maps
break down to identify and prioritize key solutions
➌ Create wireframes
to define user flow and visualize the interactions
Mind Map & Wireframes
Phase 1: Unify & standardize the basic experience
Proposed Solution 1. Unify interaction strategies and restructure user flow:
Proposed Solution 2. Decompose and unify page layouts and elements:
Proposed Solution 3. Unify copywriting and establish information guidelines:
Data-driven A/B testing guided us to the most effective one in my two design solutions for the new experience after one month testing:
The initial fully implemented solution
Phase 2A: Polish product details and strategies for better mental model and user goal supporting
To reinforce user awareness of our video collection and enhance the episode selection experience, I added and modified several elements in the second phase, following the initial full launch:
Autoplay and cues: We've implemented auto-play for the next episode and collection based on user feedback. To keep users engaged and prepared for changes, I added countdown cues for each scenario.
Auto-play next episode
Auto-play next video collection
Auto-play next episode in full screen
Phase 2B: Improve functionality for deeper and more sustained engagement.
Multiple creators collection: We aggregate collections from various creators on similar topics by machine learning algorithm, allowing users to easily find and continuously watch related collections.
Phase 3A: Develop creation feature to expand the creator pool
While I centralized the design across stakeholders and added a feature for creating and managing collections on our creator platform, I had firstly built a video collection module for user profiles, including a feature allows users to claim their machine-auto-created collections.
This has made collection feature more accessible: creators can now easily create and manage their collections, while audiences can view all collections by a creator on their profile page. These have enhanced user awareness of video collections on both our app and the creator site.
Phase 3B: Add licensed videos to further enrich content library
Our content library has expanded to include licensed films, TV shows, and self-produced programs, thanks to our content strategy and business teams. I developed features to support these new additions.
The video collection has provided users with a consistent and seamless experience, both in consumption and production, proven through data performance and qualitative research. Moreover, it has increased or creator pool, enriched the product’s diversity and our content library.
Team:
Me, 1 designer, 3 product manager, 8 developers/engineers, 1 QA
— Kuaishou Video Collection —
That’s it, thank you!
by Akah (Yaxiong Fu)
