This was a Design Challenge, and it took me six days to complete this, including the documentation of this case study.
Below you can find the design brief that was given and the solution I came up with.
Design Brief
Newsletters are publications sent periodically that let you have open communication to a specific audience with shared interests. But the biggest downside is they are limited to email or print.
As technology is evolving and becoming increasingly accessible, tremendous changes are being witnessed. We can now see an evolution in the pattern of consumption, medium preferences, and the way content is distributed. This change creates an opportunity to develop the future of newsletters by defining a new medium and eventually capitalizing on this shift. Design a platform that will enable creators to build the newsletter for this new medium and support the distribution, empowering creators.
Here are three main flows asked to consider while attempting to solve the problem-
- A high-fidelity flow around how creators will create the newsletters for this medium, and how can I help them?
- What differs between the web and a mobile version for a creator who can log in and access the features?
- The flow post creation and around how I will make it simple to distribute?
Assumptions about the company
Before moving ahead with the problem statement, I decided to make a few assumptions about the company (Dux), building this marketplace for the creators-
- Dux already has an existing platform with a strong reader base who can browse through different newsletters based on the categories. If readers find the one they like, they are directed to that publication’s page to subscribe.
- The company’s mission is to reduce friction and develop a direct relationship between publishers and their audiences.
- The company now wants to build a marketplace for the creators itself (Dux creator). It will minimize the entry barrier for newsletter publishing and will be a great extension of its mission. They will also have the advantage of being the first player, eventually leading to another revenue stream.
Understanding the existing platforms and problem associated with them-
The problem faced by the readers-
I started my research by doing some User Interviews and going through some reviews of newsletter distribution apps to understand the problem existing with emails.
I conducted interviews with 4 users, which vary from frequent newsletter readers to those who never subscribe.
Some key insights from the research were-
- Participants have to search through their spam folder to look for the subscribed newsletter.
- Some said their inbox is flooded with so many promotional and spam email messages, which gets irritating, especially when they are not interested in that content.
- Some of them hardly use mail for their personal space.
- Some even complained about forgetting who they subscribed to, so they end up ignoring even the essential ones.
The problem faced by the publishers-
I did some Competitive Research to see what essential features similar products had to offer the publishers and the problems they were trying to solve. I took some notes of the things I felt the creator did and didn’t like and further validated some of them through some articles and the platform reviews.
Through this, I was able to figure out some requirements and problems of the content creators-
- Discoverability and SEO is an issue with all the newsletter platform for emerging or lesser-known writers. New creators are usually not in the radars of these platforms until they grow a bit. In short, they will need the audience to build an audience.
- Platforms lack accurate analytics that helps drive critical decisions and are limited to open rates, click rates, and new subscribers or visitors at max.
- There’s a lack of customization options on every platform, and as a result, every newsletter ends up looking the same.
- Usually, subscribers are directed to a different page to subscribe to a publication, which adds friction and is annoying, leading to lower conversion rates.
- Since Gmail and other email providers own their platforms, they control what makes it to the user’s primary inbox, limiting newsletters’ reach.
Defining the users-
Now that I had a better understanding of what was needed, I went ahead with who I was designing for. I believed the people publishing a newsletter will most probably:
- 25–80 years old
- Organization/Small companies
- Individuals- likely to be self-employed.
Further, we can divide the product’s audience into two main groups:
- First-time publishers
- Recurring publishers
Both will have similar motivations but slightly different needs. New publishers will need more guidance, whereas recurring ones will look for more efficiency.
My Goals for this project
Now that I had a better context and understanding of the problem, keeping these things in mind, I decided on the following goals-
- Provide seamless publishing and distribution experience, specifically targetting emerging or new writers who need more direction.
- Explaining the reasoning and thoughts behind my Design decisions.
Understanding the creator’s context
When- We’re going to connect with our users (the creator) at almost every step, right from starting to publish the newsletter to publishing and monitoring it. At each stage, they could feel different emotions; therefore, we could communicate differently with them at each of these steps.
Where- The creators will also mostly use their laptops, desktop computers, and maybe tablets from anywhere — home, coffee shops, co-working spaces, airports, etc. Therefore building a web app would provide them with the best experience.
The post-publishing experience could be more relevant for mobile as they would appreciate the flexibility of managing and tracking their readers’ statistics from anywhere.
Ideation and prototyping
The features needed, actions, and pieces of information were already clear to an extent after the above phase.
I decided that the product will have a dedicated area, disconnected from the existing Dux marketplace, so the creators can have as few distractions as possible while publishing their newsletter. With this new marketplace, publishers can create and deliver their newsletters while the readers will have the control to interact and manage their subscriptions within a single product.
Also, I went for the web version as I wanted to first focus on providing a seamless experience for creating a newsletter.
After this, I immediately jumped into a quick rough paper sketch to map out the user flow, putting in all the features I was planning.
After a couple of paper iterations, I got a general idea, so I switched to Figma.
Final design and UX explanations
Below are the 3 main Wire Flows explained through the High Fidelity screens-
1) Wire flow around how will creators create and publish the newsletter
2) Wire Flow after the newsletter is published for the readers on the Dux platform
3) What differs between the web and a mobile version for a creator who can log in and access the features?
One of the things we can leverage in our product is the data that Dux already has about the features/content that successful newsletters have in common. This could help us to bring best practice guidelines for publishing. For example, Dux could determine, from their subscription data and reviews, if using illustrations makes the Design or Art newsletter more engaging and visually appealing. If there appears to be a correlation, they could suggest creators to include illustrations and GIF. We can provide this in either a premium subscription or offer it for free, making our freemium model stronger. Readers would therefore receive a better product, and both the creators and Dux would become more successful.
How do we define the success of the platform?
Here are a few metrics that I believe could be used to measure the success of this platform:
- Conversion Rate for Signup: We can measure the percentage of users who signed up after creating their page/publication. This will tell us that if the users are getting to experience enough value before signing up.
- Net promoter score (NPS): We can ask users to rate our platform after publishing a newsletter. That would be the best moment to do so as the users have now achieved their goal. We can use this moment carefully to ask for ratings or feedback.
- Retention over time: I’d measure feature retention. For example, if the creators use our marketplace but later choose not to do that again for their next newsletter, there is a chance their initial experience with the platform wasn’t positive.
And that’s a wrap. Thank you for reading!
If you think I did something well or something I can improve on, I would love to discuss it. Feel free to shoot me a message over on LinkedIn with your thoughts.
– Amrita Pathania
