From research to implementation helping design, develop and market platforms for Brands and Creators.
Platform for Brands
Complete redesign & rebuild
— ROLES
Product Design Lead
Masha Safina
Product Design
Jeff Merrick
— DATE
2016―current
Popular Pays is a platform for Creators and Brands to produce content for social and beyond. Strated from “get a free coffee for a post to Instagram”, business model evolved quite a bit and so evolved needs of platform users. Brands and Advertising agencies users required a build up of a real deal application – flow for collaborating on influencers marketing campaigns: creative brief, messaging, payments.
We developed a brand new Brands App and successfully rolled it out to our core business customers.
Process
→ Current app UX evaluation & flow mapping
→ User interviews
→ Competitors analysis
→ Design
→ Feedback (Internal Business Team)
→ Prototype
→ Feedback (Customers)
→ Assign values, scope into phases, out-scope into the next sprints
→ Implement
→ Launch to Beta users
→ Feedback ♺
First Prototype
Flat mockups are great, but it’s always an exciting opportunity to build UI out in real HTML/CSS to see how it feels in a browser, see how people use it.
Establishing Design System
Based on current branding we needed to establish a visual language while evolving iOS app into something accessable but modern and scalable with growing desing team. I had a pleasure to collaborate with a good friend of mine, Jeff Merrick, to work on the above.
Pop Pays Sketch Libraries
Platform for Brands
Further Iterations
Our team practices sprint based approach on themed projects. Key metrics of success are established at the beggining of each sprint and being tracked after code gets into production. Design, development and product leads are working in close collaboration during the whole process: from the very beginning of research (data pulls and analysis, user interviews), through design reviews, implementation & QA and into product marketing, helping shape the narrative behind new features and product offerings.
Platform for Creators
— TEAM
Product Design
Masha Safina
Matt Castillo
Jeff Merrick
— DATE
2016―current
Pop Pays Creators get their own experience: web and iOS apps that let them build out their portfolios; apply for gigs they’ve discovered or been invited to; collaborate with brands on content; get feedback and get paid!
Popular Pays’d started with Creators iOS app and has been evolving ever since with the help of talented design and development folk. One thing that remained constant – we care about our Creators, hence we are doing our best to engage with them on a regular basis by conducting user interviews or sending out simple surveys.
Marketing
With evolution of the product, its positioning evolves hand to hand. It was an exciting opportunity to help tell the story of our new Apps, company offerings and team values. I was responsible for brainstorming new site structure with our marketing team, led design team initiatives on brand exploration, and worked on front-end implementation.
Years in Review
— ROLE
Design
Front-end Development
— DATE
2016, 2017
There’re numerous ways to engage with your user base and celebrate community, but one that excites us all – years in review! It’s a great chance to go off-script with your regular process, do something creative and drive traffic to your web-site.
I handled design and development with a help on ideation from our marketing crew. Special thanks to our dev Steve, for cleaning up my JS :)
2016―
year in review
Embracing branding and messaging circa 2016 (emoji were still popular), we wanted to showcase best performing posts from our platform. Initially, we planned to craft a custom experience for each Creator (platform user) and pull up their posts from the plethora of content, but it got downscoped due to limited time and dev resources.
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2017―
year in review
2017 year was a year when Pop Pays expanded the company horizons beyond influencer marketing and decided to put stronger focus on content in a more broad context. Moving into more neutral brand and vibe, heavily focusing on content and variety of verticals instead of “popularity” and likes. Featuring “broken” grid and gradients.
