The Team

The team consisted of the CEO / Lead Engineer along with:

• 5 contract-based full-stack engineers
• 2 additional product designers
• 1 product manager

The team hired me as a Product Designer / Content Designer because they needed to add clarity, apply voice and tone strategically and unify the language across the platform. But they also needed someone who understood their ideal customer profile, and having written professionally for television and having spent 8 years in writers’ rooms, they sought both my design knowledge and my domain expertise.

Business Objective

The company wanted to attract both Readers and Writers onto the platform so writers could get script feedback and readers could earn money by providing feedback.

The Problem

Company data showed that while readers were initially interested in signing up, writers weren’t completing sign-up for the marketplace. They were getting stuck early in the process, where sign-ups were stalling. In order to uncover why, I asked to view their discovery / foundational research, but they hadn’t done any…

So I conducted my own guerilla research:

The results were entirely anecdotal and of course limited to the experience of my immediate network, but the data was crucial in shaping my process:

1. Identifying the core users of the marketplace
2. Identifying the root cause of the problem
3. Designing a solution

Identifying Users

I started by designing user stories and task flows for two users/use cases:

User Story #1

As a Screenwriter who focuses on TV comedy, I want to get notes on my 3 pilot scripts so that I can improve the scripts and send them to lit managers to get repped.

User Story #2‍

As a Script Coordinator who has written an episode of TV, I want to give script notes on comedy pilots so that I can help novice writers improve their craft while making a little extra cash on the side.

Defining the Problem

Using the results of my research and some direct interaction with the platform, I was able to identify where people were getting stuck:

The existing designs forced users to go through a form builder flow so they could specify what feedback they wanted. But Screenwriters and other Creatives aren’t accustomed to this level of customization, and the form-builder flow was an unnecessary and confusing step to these users.

Designing a Solution

Customization comes at the cost of usability, and the current experience wasn’t cutting it:

• The Calls to Action are incredibly vague
• The language is foreign to those in entertainment
• The user flow presents enormous cognitive load

BUT, the team still wanted the interface to provide flexibility so they could identify any market opportunities they hadn’t thought of before.

So I designed an easy-to-navigate form template that covered 80%-90% of use cases while providing flexibility if someone wanted to customize the form. I also added clarifying language to hand-hold the user through the process and improve visibility into system status.

I added copy to each step of the form creation flow to ensure the purpose of that step was clear.

I also designed a simple submission form template to reduce cognitive load:

I revised all CTA's for clarity and specificity:

Additional Improvements

Summary / Confirmation to improve system status visibility:

Designed all email notifications (with the help of an illustrator):

Impact / Conclusion

The impact I made was clear:

• Dropoff in the sign-up process plummeted by 4x
• Surveyed users appreciated the clarity and conciseness of the marketplace sign-up
• Sign-ups to ReadThrough rose substantially after the designs were implemented
• Added guardrails to the UX so flexibility didn’t come at the expense of usability.

I was thrilled by the opportunity to work on such an ambitious project, which is growing every day and continues to connect creative talent across Hollywood and beyond.