exploratory designs for revenue management
Exploring Revenue Tracking for Content Creators
ROLE
Product Design Intern
TEAM
2 Product Managers
2 Designers
Towards the end of my summer internship, I had a chance to work on exploratory designs for a product that would allow content creators to easily understand and manage their different revenue streams, The project was part of a quick design sprint, which required a high amount of collaboration with the Product team, as well as a short turnover time.
BACKGROUND & OVERVIEW
Enabling creators to efficiently track their revenue
Content creators make money from a lot of different platforms and places. With the rise of micro-influencers and younger content creators, more and more creators lack the tools and knowledge needed to manage their revenue streams.
Brand deals, the biggest source of creator income, are paid out sporadically. Some deals are paid out instantly, while others can take months to arrive with Net-30,-60, and -90 terms. This makes tracking earned income extra difficult for creators.
We set out to design a revenue dashboard that would allow creators to easily track and manage the money they are earning.
KEY SOLUTIONS
Improving Product Education and Conversion
01. REVENUE BREAKDOWN
A Bird's-eye view of total earnings
The revenue breakdown graph shows creators how much money they've made and from what income streams.
02. OUTSTANDING BALANCES
Figure out what money needs to be collected on
Keeping outstanding balances at the top of the page allows creators to easily figure out who owes them what, and for which projects they worked on.
03. ACTIVITY OVERVIEW
Creator's earnings history
An easily accessible history of all earned revenue for creators' records.
LET'S TALK PROCESS
How might we design a product that allows creators to easily manage their revenue across multiple streams?
RESEARCH AND IDEATION
How do creators manage their money?
Many creators, especially younger ones, earned a lot of money, but didn't necessarily know how to manage it. One creator we interviewed was making thousands a month, but was tracking everything through his notes app and couldn't easily figure out how much he actually made!
After synthesizing our learnings and brainstorming, we decided on what fundamental problems the Revenue Dashboard shoud answer.
KEY USER PAIN POINTS
"I don't have a way to easily track my revenue"
01. PAST & PRESENT REVENUE
How much money did I earn this month? How much money did I earn last month?
02. FUTURE REVENUE
How much money will I earn next month?
03. GOAL-SETTING
Am I making more money now vs. in the past? How am I earning vs. other creators my size?
After discussion, we prioritized the user problems and decided to punt on the goal-setting problem and focus on the revenue problems for this exploratory design.
Perfecting the Transaction Card
The cornerstone of the Revenue Dashboard designs are the transaction cards that hold information about each stream of revenue a creator receives.
THE TRANSACTION CARD GRAVEYARD
Depending on how the transaction is tracked (through Beacons' Invoicing product, Early Pay product, or manually entered by the creator), different actions can be performed. Different types of transaction statuses (outstanding or not) also required different treatment.
OUTSTANDING CARDS
I displayed more information on the outstanding cards, putting a larger emphasis on due date and payment status. The drop-down accommodates for any actions the user might want to take on the outstanding payment.
ACTIVITY CARDS
The activity cards are more condensed since they serve as a record, rather than an actionable item.
FINAL DESIGN
A quick view of all your revenue streams
The final design allows creators to easily visualize their income, take action on projects have yet to pay them out, and view their past transactions for record-keeping.
NEXT STEPS
Testing & iterating on the revenue dashboard
Since this design was purely exploratory, not all aspects made it to the final, shipped design. We conducted further exploration and testing with users in order to reach the final, shipped design.
Learnings & Takeaways
DESIGN WITHOUT CONSTRAINT
This project allowed me to be more playful with design since the idea was exploratory. I started out by designing loosely, and then tied everything together with the existing design system. This allowed me to be more creative in the way I visualized data.
PLAY AS A TEAM
Brainstorming and wireframing with my PMs really helped me figure out what direction I wanted to take. Although the design was exploratory, being able to refer back to them helped me ground my design in the user and their problems.
THANKS TO
Dean (Head of Design) for pairing with me on this awesome design and helping me out when i felt lost!
Jacob and Jess for being amazing PMs and my favorite people to whiteboard with!
