Tech & Software
Desktop
Mobile
Scaling and Redesigning a Video Platform for Digital Growth
Redesigned a web-based video platform, driving a 900% increase in daily visitors and global reach
Lead Product Designer (Me)
Background
What is Just Beta?
Justbeta, now Betacache, is an online video platform created for outdoor rock climbers, specifically those in the bouldering discipline. It gives climbers the ability to find bouldering videos known as beta videos for outdoor rock climbs from online sources.
Challenge
The experience left a lot to be desired from its users
Climbers who used the Just Beta site to find bouldering beta videos struggled to discover and access specific video content due to its limiting site experience- lack of intuitive navigation, confusing user journeys and usability issues across desktop and mobile experiences.
Opportunity
Increasing usability will lead to greater user retention
Just Beta's challenges of declining users due to poor navigation and inconsistent experiences reflect a common problem across nuanced platforms: maintaining user engagement amid rising expectations. The platform's stagnant innovation led to design fragmentation and inefficient navigation, hurting retention.
This created an opportunity to rebuild Just Beta with a cohesive design system and optimized user experience, addressing immediate issues while enabling future scalability and growth.
Solution
Redesigning Just Beta for modern engagement and growth
To address declining user engagement and poor content discoverability, I led a comprehensive redesign of Just Beta’s core platform. This overhaul reimagined the platform user experience with a focus on:
Improved Navigation
Various navigational sub menus were introduced throughout to aide in user navigation
Streamlined Content Discovery
Introduction of a new visual experience which improved user engagement and aligned more directly with users expectations
Responsive Design
A mobile-first design approach in order to ensure scalability and optimized experiences across devices
Solution
Overview of revamped user flows
Overhauling core user experiences improved the user satisfaction drastically. Some critical flows included:
New Filtering System Flow
By integrating a cohesive design system and enhancing visual hierarchy, we improved search functionality and created a more engaging, user-centric interface across both desktop and mobile.
Explore Page User Flow
The new discovery "Explore Page" experience dramatically improved addressing a major user pain point which involved the ability to discover new climbs and areas to visit.
Optimized Search Functionality
We streamlined the search experience to allow users to easily find their selected climb with updated UI elements, a simple yet but effective solution that wasn’t missing in the previous iteration.
Impact
The redesigned platform experience lead to exponential growth
Following implementation of the updated platform design solutions, Just Beta saw exponential growth.
The number of daily users grew 900% from an average of 40 to 400 daily users.
There was a notable 20% increase in all forms of user traffic show in site tracking analytics.
The site audience expanded to regions outside the United States given the introduction of new functionalities such as sorting by region.
Post-launch metrics showed a complete inverse of user satisfaction with the new platform experience.
Below you'll find a glimpse into my design process.
Feel free to reach out to learn more!
william.i.avelar@gmail.com
Foundational Research
Lack of user insights impeded growth
After a initial kick-off meeting, an overarching objective to improve the platform video discovery and navigation experience kickstarted a foundational research phase.
Key Research Objectives
Insights into the target audience needs, preferences, and motivations looking for climbing beta
Assessment of platform value proposition with new and returning users
Methodology
User interviews, contextual inquiries, and surveys worked well as evaluative quantitative research to help pinpoint platform problem areas for the platform.
Usability Testing Insights
Following NNG best practices, we conducted testing with 5 users to generate 80% of insights, where sticking to a streamlined timeline was critical.
"Climbers who use the Just Beta platform to find bouldering beta videos are struggling to efficiently discover and access the content they want to see. "
Foundational Research
Current popular offerings such as Youtube lacked climbing oriented features
Although alternatives were described as “usable", research revealed key pain points such as discovering new climbs to try, new areas to visit, and finding additional climb details .
This resulted in climbers meshing together various alternatives leading to a sub-par beta gathering experience.
Foundational Research
The Just Beta platform in its current form wasn’t ideal
Research revealed that the current site's structure and navigation severely affected the user experience.
Dated Navigation
The text-heavy experience conflicted with the predominant method of using visual inspiration to find new climbs to try.
Limited Mobile Design
A lack of responsive mobile design consideration was considered a “deal-breaker” for many potential users of the Just Beta platform.
Confusing Contextual Elements
Design Process
Working in an Agile setting, we used the live platform to generate actionable insights and quickly iterate
Testers included both individuals familiar and unfamiliar with the site, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation of the user experience.
Introduction of Explore Page
One of the earliest features implemented that would become a turning point for the platform was the inclusion of a dedicated image first navigation which allowed users to discover climbs.
Testing a Preliminary Mobile Interface
Second Iteration of the Explore Page
Following another iteration and testing sprint for the dedicated explore page experience, we introduced more key features such as a filtering system and more mobile friendly UI.
Arriving at the Final Iteration
With each quick, iterative sprint, we were able to make rapid meaningful changes with the final phase being realized with users and stakeholders goals being satisfied.
Incorporating a Design System
In addition to facilitating the sprint framework, I created a preliminary design system based around Material Design styles that could be integrated into the existing site infrastructure, working closely with the engineering team to ensure scalability.
"Beta is way easier to find.”
Final Design
The final design addressed key user pain points
The updated site now follows a cohesive structure with intuitive navigation, and heavily draws from user experiences to align with expectations.
The Final Design
The revamped Just Beta site improved the experience of finding specific climbs with key information displayed, advanced filtering, streamlined beta searching, new discovery systems, and an enhanced video viewing experience.
Takeaways
Deeply understanding user perceptions is critical to uncovering critical challenges
It was only by deeply understanding the rock climbing community that this experience was able to satisfy their specific conflicts with other systems.
While numbers are important for quantifying change, qualitative data drove this project from the beginning. Incorporating quantitative metrics in testing, such as device usage for browsing, provided valuable insights from subtle issues such as iOS specific text scaling issue to the creation of the most popular feature set of the platform: the Explore page.
Takeaways
Adapting your approach for the task is critical to success
As with any process, reflecting is essential to continually growing and improving. Some meaningful moments to highlight include:
Knowledge of Other Spaces for Better Collaboration
Having a deeper understanding of web development languages facilitated more effective collaboration between design (myself) and the development team, particularly in assessing feasibility and estimating time commitments for proposed changes.
Working in Sprints
Being able to draw from a number of known methodologies to mix together to address the expedited timeline lead to new innovative methods.
Specifically, working in an Agile framework lead to the creation of new research methods to meet deadlines such as combining a user interviews and contextual inquiries to form a hybrid qualitative research method. Highly effective!
Another tool in the swiss-army knife.
Thanks for having a read!
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