Updating the file upload experience of a B2B market research platform in order to support bulk uploads, resolve existing usability issues, and increase Annual Recurring Revenue.
Lead Designer
Discuss
Web
UX/UI Design, Wireframing, Prototyping
Discuss is a B2B qualitative market research platform where users can conduct research and analyze it to learn more about their customers. Research is typically gathered using either the platform’s online survey or video interview tools. Alternatively, users can upload their own video files for a fee. This allows them to leverage the platform’s various insights extraction tools with previously conducted research or research done outside of the platform.
Interest and usage of this upload feature had historically been low. Less than 3% of all projects within Discuss contained "off-platform" uploads. This minimal interest changed after we released Genie, a generative AI tool that creates text-based summaries of interview recordings. Extracting insights from a set of recordings—which could take days of work—could now be done in minutes. Several clients expressed interest in starting projects that exclusively contained off-platform research for use with Genie, with one planning to upload hundreds of hours of video content.
However, our existing file upload flow was not built to support this use case and only allowed uploads of one file at a time, among other issues. If we wanted to sell this ability to summarize off-platform research, we needed to redesign and streamline our current file upload experience.
Redesign our file upload flow to support bulk uploads and resolve any other identified usability issues. Reducing friction within the off-platform upload flow will increase the sales and renewals of related subscription add-ons, ultimately increasing our Annual Recurring Revenue.
"Reducing friction within the off-platform upload flow will increase the sales and renewals of related subscription add-ons, ultimately increasing our Annual Recurring Revenue."
I started this project in November 2023 as the Design Lead and worked with a Product Manager and an Engineer Lead to deliver our new file upload experience.
I created wireframes and prototypes within Figma, which I presented to the Product and Design teams for feedback and iteration. I also met several times with the Engineer Lead to discuss the feasibility of my designs and anticipated technical constraints, adjusting my work as needed. Once my designs were finalized, I created annotated design documentation for our Engineers to follow during implementation.
I began this project before all of its requirements were defined, with the understanding that additional requirements would be provided later by the Product Manager. The only requirement I had at the beginning was that the upload flow must support bulk uploads. I decided to start by performing an informal heuristic evaluation of the existing upload flow using Nielsen Norman's 10 usability heuristics. During this evaluation, I identified three primary heuristics where our current flow fell short and used those to guide my design decisions throughout the project. These three heuristics were...
To begin a file upload, users must first navigate to the Recordings page (Steps 1 and 2 below). Next, they must expand a dropdown titled "Tools & Downloads" (Step 3) and then select the upload option within the dropdown (Step 4). The buried placement of this entry point forces users to search for it and harms feature discoverability for new users.
Numbered callouts (1-4) depicting the steps required to begin the existing file upload flow
After a video file is uploaded to Discuss it must undergo post-processing before it becomes visible in the platform. Post-processing usually takes more time than the initial file upload itself. However, there are no progress indicators or any mention that this is a required step. This can cause confusion for the user when their file upload is "completed" but the video is nowhere to be found and will be even more of an issue once multiple files can be uploaded at a time.
Not only are users forced to begin an upload from the Recordings page, they also must specify the language of each file before they can upload it. The amount of clicks this requires makes for a frictional experience. In total, it takes 8 clicks minimum to upload a file when starting from the home page of the platform and 6 clicks minimum to upload a file starting from the Recordings page.
Breakdown of Upload Flow Clicks:
My first round of designs focused on:
Overview page design with newly added section for uploading off-platform research
New Upload section designs with drag-and-drop functionality and upload status
After receiving feedback from the Product team during a design critique, my next iterations revolved around:
Next iteration of Upload Recordings section and Upload Progress Cards
I also explored alternate designs of the file upload status cards that included progress steppers, as I thought that informing users of all the steps involved up front would be helpful. In the end, I opted for a plainer design with no stepper as this design choice was based on a hunch and adding one would introduce more complexity for the engineers.
Exploration of various Upload Progress Card designs with steppers to give users additional context into the upload process.
At this point, I formally met with the Lead Engineer to discuss my designs and their feasibility in depth. This conversation was insightful and revealed several things contrary to my initial design assumptions:
I worked with him to revise my designs so that they adhered to technical constraints and minimized engineering debt, while still delivering the optimal user experience that I envisioned.
My final iterations resulted in:
Final designs for various Upload Section states (empty, uploaded, error, limit reached)
Final page designs (Overview page empty state, Upload in progress state, Overview page uploaded state, and Recordings page with new dropdown menu design)
The final upload flow that I designed shaved off 5 clicks from the original, making it possible to start an upload in just 3 clicks. This was a ~60% reduction and made for a snappier experience, especially when uploading multiple batches of files.
Overview of the steps removed from the original upload flow
The final delivered upload flow
Although I left the company before I could see my designs implemented their impact on metrics, some of the projected outcomes were:
I'd also like to track customers who have an off-platform upload subscription but no Genie subscription, including metrics like the average number of uploaded files in their projects. This would help me understand the impact of my redesigned upload flow without Genie's influence.
This was the first project at Discuss where I had a dedicated Engineer Lead that I could consult and work with during my design process. Having this resource and additional perspective to help guide my design decisions was invaluable. However, this project was not without its hiccups.
Due to differing schedules and priorities, the Engineer Lead wasn't able to validate my initial design proposals with a proof-of-concept until after I had already done several rounds of iterations. This revealed several incorrect technical assumptions that I had made, requiring me to revise my work.
Despite this, I had prepared several alternative designs in the event that my favored design solution did not pan out. Together, we reviewed these designs and devised an optimal workaround. I was then able to confidently deliver an improved final solution that met our design, technical, and business requirements.
This new upload flow would not have been possible, or would have at least taken much longer to produce, had I not been able to work so closely with an Engineer Lead. I look forward to future projects where I have the privilege of designing with and learning from developers, and am excited to see what we can accomplish.