Tencent Video Creator Platform

Role: UX Design Lead

Date: Nov 2023 – Feb 2024

Category: Web | Platform

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Project Overview

Tencent Video Creator Platform is an online platform open to video creators and professional organizations, providing full-process creation service.

As a lead UX designer, I initiated and led a project to optimize the overall experience of creators. I was responsible for UX&UI design strategy and work, the entire project delivery and cross-team collaboration.

Main Contributions

Designed multi-end products in forms of web, app and Wechat Mini Program, involving 20+ product features.
User satisfaction scores increased to 4.41, and the Weekly Active high-quality Creators grew by 25%.
Builded and maintained the design guidelines and UI kit of the platform, doubling the average design efficiency.

Project Background

Tencent Video has been exploring the video ecosystem business since 2021, and has continuously developed and refined its technology-driven video entertainment ecosystem in recent years. Creators provide content for the ecosystem, promoting its prosperous development.

Tencent Video Creator Platform is a one-stop online creation service platform provided by Tencent Video, supporting multiple product forms, including web, app, and WeChat Mini Program. It enables video creators to manage their content, analyze performance, and interact with their fans.

User Research

Through periodic events such as "Creator Salons," we collected user feedback from user research and found that what creators are fundamentally most concerned about is "what they can do/how they can do it on Tencent Video to earn better income." However, they are unclear about it.

Business Understanding

To address the issue of creators "not knowing how to earn better income", we communicated with the Tencent Video's PM and operation teams and learned that a creator's income is actually related to two factors: the unit price of traffic and the scale of traffic.

By deeply understanding the business, we have summarized a formula:

Creator Income = Traffic Unit Price × Traffic Scale
Creator Income = VIP Revenue Share Unit Price × Paid Album Content Traffic Scale >> Advertising Revenue Share Unit Price × Free Album Content Traffic Scale > Advertising Revenue Share Unit Price × Free Single Content Traffic Scale

This formula reflects the key relationship between income and traffic factors, where VIP revenue share has a much higher value than advertising revenue share, and content traffic scale significantly impacts overall earnings.

We systematically analyzed the key factors affecting creator income and identified those that creators can actively influence. Through this analysis, we identified several ways for creators to increase their earnings, including adapting to platform's acvocacy, improving the quality of their work, and increasing the quantity of their work.

Previous Version Review

In addition to collecting user feedback, I organized our design team to conduct a UX review of the old version of Tencent Video Creator Platform to identify as many experience issues as possible. We found that the main issues were low information efficiency, lack of creation guidance, and inconsistent user experience.

Creator Experience Revamp Project Goals

To increase creator satisfaction and address the experience issues of the old version, we initiated the Creator Experience Revamp Project, aiming to achieve the following four main goals:

Improving fundamental experience
Conveying platform advocacies
Helping creators improve content quality
Enhancing experience consistency

Improving Fundamental Experience

Homepage is the most visited page on the platform, crucial for shaping user impressions and guiding following actions. With a tight project timeline and a number of issues to address, we prioritized the Homepage redesign after a comprehensive evaluation to most effectively optimize the fundamental experience.

Through previous version review, we identified the low information efficiency issue on the homepage. In the redesign, we restructured the page layout to emphasize the updated information that users care about and need most. Since creators are primarily concerned with traffic and earnings, we displayed a more comprehensive and detailed Dashboard section at the top of the new homepage, allowing users to access this information immediately. Additionally, to convey the platform’s advocacies and inspire creators, we added sections featuring creation opportunities to the homepage.

Conveying Platfrom Advocacies

Creators can gain more traffic support by aligning with platform advocacies in revenue sharing methods, content types, content topics, and supply-demand dynamics. To effectively convey these advocacies, at the start of the project, I collaborated closely with various stakeholders to align and confirm the project goal of conveying platform advocacies at a strong level. Then we sorted out the appropriate advocacies for different creator segments and brainstormed the possible delivery scenarios and methods across the platform.

Based on those scenarios, I developed a set of full-link design solutions to convey platform advocacies.

In the design of conveying platform advocacies, for users who have not activated album creation rights, we reinforce the value of rights in multiple ways at multiple points on the homepage to attract users to activate the album creation rights.

Additionally, on the Album Creation Rights Detail Page, we further clarify these rights by explaining what an album is, the benefits of creating albums, the activation conditions with perceivable progress, and successful examples, to attract, guide, and facilitate users in applying for album creation rights.

To help users quickly learn the value of activating album creation rights, we distilled the core idea of "helping professional creators gain more." We emphasized the direct increases in traffic and earnings after activation, supplemented by other basic benefits, and clearly conveyed the full range of album privileges through a comparison table.

Helping improve work quality

We still emphasized attention to details led to quality results despite the intense workload. I initiated a design-driven requirement, based on creators’ needs of improving work quality, focusing on sharpening the high-frequency data feature. Through early user research, I’ve learnt that to improve work quality, creators usually take two actions: continuous iteration and learning. Inspired by the "Kolb's Learning Cycle" model, I implemented a positive feedback loop in the data diagnosis feature design to help creators grow continuously.

I pushed to add the data diagnosis feature bar on the homepage. Based on real-time data feedback, we provide systematic and actionable suggestions or encouragements, making the data more understandable and instructive. This guides creators to take targeted actions toward their goals, see tangible results, and continuously grow through a reinforcing positive cycle.

Based on users' pain points and needs in different states, and their content creation preferences, we provide targeted recommendations and encouragements aligned with the platform’s direction. These not only help users solve their problems and address their needs but also promot the achievement of business goals.

Developing design system

To improve consistency in design language and user experience across the platform’s complex product architecture, I led the design team in building and updating the design system for the Tencent Video Creator Platform. The design guideline and UI kit also helped significantly enhance the efficiency of both design and engineer teams..

The design system was applied to 100+ pages, doubling design efficiency on average.

Integrating Brand Attributes

To enhance experience consistency, we also integrated brand attributes into systemic touch points on the platform, such as landing pages, to reinforce brand identity and create a consistent visual style. I implemented the visual design of the header image on some landing pages, integrating the stage curtain pattern which is Tencent Video's branding element, as the base image. The image is overlaid with the main color of TV dramas, making the image rich in layers while highlighting the relevance to the brand and content.

This design strategy was applied to various products, such as Revenue Share Rankings Wechat Mini Program of Tencent Video. The header image of the TV Drama Detail Page consists of the stage curtain pattern overlaid with the main color of the TV drama poster.

The design strategy was also applied to Album Creation Rights Detial Page on the platform. The header image of this page consists of the stage curtain pattern overlaid with honorable balck-gold VIP color.

Data Feedback

After the release of the first version of the experience revamp project, the creator satisfaction score increased to 4.41, and weekly activity of high-quality creators grew by 25%. We also received positive feedback from users and all the stakeholders.