Klip is a social app that sparks communities around knowledge-sharing. We were pushing out the beta launch of the consumer app and we were discovering the direction for the B2B brands’ community solution. We found out users didn't quite come back to the app, and we wanted to understand why.
Along the user persona spectrum, we have Community Builders, who are leaders in knowledge-sharing communities; and Knowledge Seekers, who are followers of the Communities Builders and they consume knowledge-sharing content.
❓Problems
⭐ Goals
While wrapping up the onboard journey, I was designing the returning user journey for different types of users. The prompt we should give was unclear - I didn’t have an aligned picture of our goal for the users, and prompts could be very different even if the users belong to the same user group based on their different behaviors. In addition, the second return was nothing different than a third or fourth return if the goal was to engage users.So why didn’t we solve the problem programmatically, so we have a solution for whenever or whoever?
I then proposed a user engagement system.
The framework I set includes three parts: user goals for different personas, engagement trigger, and engagement method.
So my plan will take 3 steps:
This way we would have a solid engagement system that can help navigate users whenever they come back.
The user engagment system included user goals for both Knowledge Seekers and Community Builders. For each user type, the following are defined:
This was achieved by running a few workshops with the team, including design, engineer, stakeholders, marketing. Making sure the user goals were aligned with the broader team was important, especially the success metrics that we were about to measure in our beta testing. So the goals were set for success.
I selected key user goals for community builders and knowledge seekers to conduct brainstorm session. Before the session, I conducted secondary research to summarize a set of prompts to provide inspiration for people who are not familiar with the methods. Because of the research of the engagement, I included some of the best practices leveraging the gamification mechanism.
After the series of brainstorming sessions, I summarized the insights into 3 tiers with a already-have category. The first tier includes the most recommended features, which help multiple user goals at once and were most frequently shown in the affinity map. Those were most helpful to solve the user retention problem.
💡Insights
Tier 1 (most recommended):
Tier 2:
Tier 3:
Already-haves:
Summarizing all the information I gained, I concluded that we needed two things to focus on next:
As planned, we needed to apply the engagement methods back to the user goals we defined. And I also started creating the challenge and reward system.
I will not go into the details of all the user goals, as now the B2B story unfolds with the above insights we gained on the B2C side.
The previous B2B approach focused on building brand communities on our platform - we had a big flower brand interested but it was moving slowly. We also explored potential monetization with brands such as affiliate programs. But they didn’t quite solve our problem of gaining traction while making money.
The sales team continued talking to potential clients. A publicist for large consumer brands was interested in our brand community, especially the gamification user engagement features we were still designing. He loved our community moderation tools as well.
At the same time, we received some valuable feedback that inspired our B2B pivot:
💡Insights
So we made the pivot. We build community solutions for brands in their app instead of bringing brands to our platform - an embedded community.
Now we have a solid direction to go. To really solve the problem, I researched, interviewed, and included stakeholders to make some decisions. We had a framework setup.
We approached generating a branded product demo first since we had a meeting with the publicist team soon. So we had the chance to quickly pitch and validate our direction. The embedded community branded demo included:
📌 Actionable Items
It was a fast mockup within a tight shcedule, but the result was a proven success. They immediately had several top consumer brands interested. For demonstration purposes, I will show some demo screens if it’s built in the Dunkin Donut App.
The first client meeting happened in 2 weeks. I managed to create mockups that visualize the solution of both the clients and the stakeholders. We presented the flows in front of the client and they were very impressed! They said “This mockup is very to the point and it’s exactly what we want. We believe many brands would be interested in this!”
And it opened the door for us.
There’s always tight deadlines, but this one was extremely tight.
The first mockup didn’t come out to-the-point, which created a lot of stressful vibe within the team. And when the stressful vibe accumulated to a certain point, some people entered the “fight or flight” mode. It got really intense with design, engineer, sales… basically everywhere. Long story short, I ended up being the only senior designer that could take the responsibility.
The key to the situation, I recognized, was communication.
It requires the right communication media and tone with the right people. And it requires understanding different parties’ perspectives while sythesizing and summarizing. For example, the sales people. They obviously palys an important role in the pitch, and they usually have a lot of insights in the industry, in this case, the publists and agencies. But some of them can be hard to communicate with, especially if it’s about design. So for them, what I found most useful was summary and visualization. I would step up and summarize for them in these prep meetings to avoid wasting time, because you surely have seen people talking forever but they are talking about totally different things. And I would quickly draw or frame in order to visualize and align ideas.
The angry person turned into so much delight when he saw my second version mockup and summary - he felt I understood him.I used slightly different ways to communicate with different people, but I always made sure I understand them and I take their perspectives into consideration when I design.
At the end, we created a very impressive mockup and visionary plan that shows exactly how we can build what the clients needed.
Maybe there’s a third thing that helped me, that’s staying calm. But the right way to communicate is an art, indeed.
I believe the more code I crack to communicate with different people, the more insights I could gain. And it would be very beneficial to create a product that’s wanted and needed.
If the stakeholder is a divergent thinker, the team might suffer. If it goes bad, the team could spent time running around but ahieve nothing tangible.
One time, the stakeholder saw this gamification feature that gets people hooked by showing how many cents they made by each short-video swipe. And he wanted it. Usually what the team did was to put a pin on it, and follow the existing plan in order to achieve goals. But it didn’t seem to work this time.
I first tried reasoning how it could be a dark pattern to our targeted audience, and how it diminished our core value, but it didn’t work. I then included other teams and came up with a plan that could be easily executed and detachable, to test it with minimal cost, in order to prove it not effective.
Before I started developing the plan, I saw an opportunity. There was a community builder that we just brought in, and that stakeholder happened to trust him and wanted to meet with him. So I couldn’t miss the opportunity. During the meeting, I asked a lot of questions relating to the targeted audience, the gamifications and rewards that interests them, the flows that he operates these campaigns, etc.
The stakeholder was directed to the right design path eventually. And we focused on the right challenge and reward system with his approval.
As I designer, it’s our job to inform and educate the stakeholder about what is right. We all know it, but this is not enough.
Sometimes we need to leverage a lot of resources in order to do our designer’s job. It could be looping in other teams, it could be using data and research, it could be consulting authority, it could be testing it. But the key is, we need to be flexible and smart with these resources, because there could be millions of different situations, and because we are working with people at the end of the day.
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