Doreen Zhao
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Patreon
UXUI, product design, web app
Team: Doreen Zhao, Arnold Wei
Completed under the guidance of: Amy Lima, Preeti Kohli, Shane Wickramasuriya
Although Patreon has established itself as a vital platform for creatives to receive support directly from their fans, there is limited functionality for discovering and searching for new creators, relying on a basic search input field and explore page only reachable to users with existing accounts. Our goal is to enhance the experience of discovering new creators, increasing patron engagement and support for a wider range of creators.
We conducted interviews with both existing users and those who are not current users of Patreon to learn about their content preferences, expectations for search and discover functions, and perceived barriers to supporting creators on Patreon and other platforms. Using Dovetail, we synthesized our interview data and discovered a few patterns/trends:
People don’t currently use Patreon to explore.
People are hesitant to spend money subscribing to content creators.
Good algorithmic recommendations catch users’ attention, and many people rely on the algorithm to discover new content/content creators.
→ Interview patterns
We then conducted a usability audit of the existing website on desktop, noting features they did have and potential areas for improvement.
→ No user account
On the landing page, the only place to go to explore is the “Find a Creator” search bar. While typing into it does pull up predictive search results, the list of results lacks context, listing only a creator name, short nondescriptive description, and a profile picture. The design of the search page seems to be more suitable for mobile, and doesn’t give users much information about the results or direction for searching.
→ Logged in existing user
The explore page for existing users is a new feature. Although features like the topic tags and recommendations based on user activity are nice, this page is only accessible once you log in to your account, and could still be further enhanced to invite users to discover new creators. Using the search bar pulls up the same minimal page that is also accessible from the landing page.
Our solutions:
- Revamp the landing page search bar, adding genres and categories.
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Improve the explore page. Make it accessible for anyone visiting the website, add more context to thumbnail cards like metrics and socials, and add more tag filtering. An overall more descriptive and appealing thumbnail invites users to click into new creator profiles.
- Create a new search results page with a structure that will be familiar and easily navigable to users. Add search filters function and more previewing of the creators’ content.
→ Mid-fidelity wireframes
→ Search and explore from the landing page
Adding the ability to explore different categories, as well as “Trending” and “Featured” sections, gives more structure to what is likely new users’ first attempt to explore what Patreon has to offer. Users can also go straight to the Explore page .
→ Explore page with filters, tags, and featured
The new Explore page has tagging on each creator’s profile, and the ability to search by sub-tags as well. Hovering thumbnails previews the creator’s content (like a featured post), and metrics and links to other socials are also shown. These changes provide context and help users understand what different creators actually have to offer without having to click in, which reduces frustration while exploring the site and draws users in.
→ Search results and filters
The new search results page allows filtering, as well as even more previewing of the creators’ content. The search bar also has a button to direct users back to the explore page.
→ Explore and search (desktop) - link to full prototype
UI for mobile is in progress!