QUEST IN A NUTSHELL

WATCH AND LAUGH

Laughly is the go-to destination for its top-notch, extensive comedy selection. Previously known as Laugh Radio, the platform continues to grow as the exclusive streaming source for comedy content. We worked with the founder to research the streaming experience and redesign their mobile app.

My team took a look at two specific problems: researching methods for community engagement and monetization, and restructuring the existing architecture of the app to accommodate video content.

Role

Researcher, User Experience Designer

Party Size

12 members

Quest Duration

8 weeks

Assist Laughly in redesigning their mobile app for the introduction of video content, new monetization strategy, and community engagemeng features.

QUEST LOG

On top of delivering a content structure that would be intuitive for users, Laughly was looking to explore potential new features that might help with community engagement. I worked as a researcher and led the low fidelity stage with a colleague. Beyond that, I was responsible for quality assurance and providing feedback for improvements in the high fidelity stage.

We sketched as a team for 2 hours during this design studio to generate tons of ideas.

With my counterpart, Namika Hamasaki, we led our team of designers through a design studio session to start generating ideas following our competitive research. Namika led the audio-video team on channel content design, I led the community and monetization team.

SHOWING APPRECIATION

Our research showed that one popular engagement feature on streaming sites was showing appreciation for the streamer through donations. We worked with the founder to try and define which interactions we wanted to move forward with and which ones would be tied to monetization. Below are the first round of wireframes.

Taking into consideration the different interactions and monetizing them meant a huge combination of ways to proceed.

I thought about monetizing claps directly, or having this tied to a bundle with subscriptions. An alternative was using the claps as a positive feedback system, in the place of user ratings. Instead, users could then directly tip comedians for their content.

However, we had leapt ahead with the assumption here that users were actively interacting at time of consumption.

Sketches to visualize monetizing claps vs. directly tipping

. . . OR NOT?

Following the low-fidelity stage, our research informed us that when streaming, users preferred passively listening in the background, usually while multi-tasking. It didn't make sense to add in features that worked well with live-streamed video to an audio-dominated app. Users weren't ready to adopt this behavior yet.

The team felt that independent microtransactions lacked synergy with the Laughly subscription tier business model. Eventually, claps, tipping in general, and leaderboards were scrapped by the high fidelity stage in favor of prioritizing the content structure. We shifted to focus on how to represent different subscription tiers and content.

BUT LAUGHING ANYWAYS

Keeping the ball rolling during this project was difficult with a large team working in parallel. Between Laughly and user needs, the scope was constantly changing. An agile environment with daily stand-ups made pivoting extremely helpful.

Our biggest lesson was on being generous with idea development in the early stages of the design with respect to our users. Though the social engagement features were removed from the picture, I enjoyed tackling the many UX challenges posed by this mixed media and monetization problem.

You can access the final prototype below, which was finalized by the amazing high-fidelity team led by Namika Hamasaki and Connie Leong.

SEE THE PROTOTYPE

REWARDS

Dead End Conqueror

+ Humility for scrapped content
+ Agile Environmentalist

Know Your Stuff

+ Competitive Analysis Buff
+ Design Studio Emcee

Low Fi, High Five

+ Low Fidelity Leadership
+ Quality Assurance Team

DELVE DEEPER

Finery

REREAD QUEST LOG ABOVE

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