Viki

Fan-powered international video translation

UX Design Lead

2013-2015 | San Francisco & Singapore

#startup, #consumer, #streaming, #crowdsourcing, #translation, #showcase

Viki logo Fan-powered international video translation

In a streaming world where most international content is still pirated by fans and translated and subtitled by volunteers because a lack of overseas licensing, Viki created a two-pronged model of content arbitrage.

First, Viki built subtitling tools accessible to casual fans without specialized software, and created a space for them to coordinate around favorite content. Second, Viki paid to legally license international content outside its traditional markets, making those fan- translated accessible to audiences around the world.

Projects

After capturing the existing states of each product and its primary user flows, I collaborated with each team to focus on top priority improvements and fixes, alongside efforts to train each team in more user centered mindsets. We implemented top fixes, re-engineered web for A/B testing, overhauled analytics, and built out internal content tools.

Role: UX Lead

I joined Viki as the first UX designer, and focused on triaging the highest priority needs from each product and marketing team.

The company had one visual designer and one marketing designer across web, iOS, Android, and internal CMS tools. I aligned and grew the team, eventually training my own successor.

Impact

Outcome. Improved product coordination, ability to a/b test hypotheses, optimized onboarding, and designed better internal metrics.

Reflections. Challenges included operationalizing new processes (org level culture change buy-in), and cobbling together existing designers into a team.

Project areas

Internal and external tools for viewing & translating video content

Product & user workflows Capturing user lifecycles (viewer & translator communities) across platforms from discovery and engagement through membership onboarding. Evaluating current state Heuristic evaluation of web tools and mobile apps with each product team. Team lead & product planning Introducing a design team mentality to align and lead existing scattered designers. Flexibility for experiments Restructuring landing page for better analytics and flexible A/B testing experiments. Managing content Designing a content management system for internal video and contract management. Subscriptions Subscriber attrition flow analysis and optimization experiments. Making analytics useful Collaboration with data scientist to develop analytics dashboards for various company stakeholders. Ad specs Requirements and documentation for new ad product behavior. Side projects Hackathon prototype for a more dynamic viewing experience.