Clara
Redesigning a community for creators built on pay transparency.
Define
PROBLEM SPACE
“Given content creation is a newer and unregulated industry, it often results in massive pay disparities that disproportionately affect creators of color and creators from other marginalized groups.” - Christen Nino De Guzman (Clara, CEO & Founder)
One of the most important findings I uncovered during market research was the pay gap for people of color. Sadly, the pay gap is ever so prominent in the creator industry as well.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Creators new to the industry don’t have a single source of truth other than Google and TikTok, but these platforms don’t take into account additional factors that determine how much someone should get paid.
No access to accurate information about working with brands leads creators to accept deals, unsure of whether they are being “paid a fair amount proportionate to the business they are directing towards (Christen Nino De Guzman).”
HOW IS CLARA SOLVING THIS PROBLEM?
Clara is educating content creators and providing a safe space to share your payment information.
Given I had no direct contact with the founder of Clara, I took it upon myself to investigate their social media, and Q&A articles to understand Christen’s vision for the app in its upcoming iterations, while also defining the company’s business goals and user pain points.
There were multiple events for creators to attend, geared mostly towards creators new to the industry, however, they still provide useful content for those with more years of experience and larger followings. It was clear through the message Clara shared that empowering creators to negotiate pay and providing a resource was top of mind for the company.
Uncovering insights from the UX audit and user interviews to prioritize redesign changes.
UX AUDIT
Identifying potential usability issues with Clara’s user interface to address in the app redesign.
The first step in understanding the user’s experience with the app was a UX audit to clearly define the usability issues users are already experiencing.
Given the issues I uncovered were assumed problems users were experiencing, I chose to make one of my user interview research goals to help hear first-hand from users. This meant incorporating contextual interviews into my user interviews. Although I could “try” to put myself in the shoes of Clara’s users, I couldn’t allow bias to guide my decisions. Qualitative data was needed.
Describe your image
Describe your image
USER INTERVIEWS
Limited access to users meant two types of interview groups.
Given Clara is new to the market - launched in January 2022 - it was difficult getting access to its users. I ended up reaching out to people who I noticed were already on the app and was able to get four of them to agree to an interview; this was Group A.
The other set of content creators I interviewed, Group B, had never used Clara, but they provided details about their experience as creators I otherwise wouldn’t have had access to, such as:
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The resources they wish were available when first starting as creators to help demystify the industry.
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A glimpse into their partnership journey with (Group A) and without (Group B) Clara.
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How Group B determines what they should be paid without using Clara.
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How Group A uses Clara to determine they pay.
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Ways Group A search for brands and reviews, and how they would prefer to complete these tasks.
INSIGHTS
Aside from confirming the usability issues uncovered in the UX audit were common pain points, there were additional user insights from interviews:
Pay rate: Users have a hard time understanding what they should be getting paid for brand deals.
No additional value add: Aside from using the app to search for reviews and cross-check for their pay rate, users don’t see themselves using the app.
Trust: Anonymous reviews and being unable to directly link your social media account to your profile (by logging in) results in a lack of credibility.
Opportunity for content curation: 80% of participants mentioned there is room for content curation on the app.
Resources & Community: When first starting off, content creators need resources to help them navigate the industry.
THE FOCUS
How might we become a resource for creators unsure of how to navigate the industry?
The UX audit and interview findings helped frame this statement. Since the user pain points touched on many aspects that could be improved with the app, I originally had multiple ‘how might we...’ statements and narrowed it down to this overarching one.
Ideate
PRIORITIZATION
Assessing the impact and effort to prioritize app requirements and usability issues for the redesign.
After user interviews, I brainstormed possible solutions to solve user pain points with Clara and the creator industry. These solutions, along with the usability opportunities uncovered in the UX audit were combined and prioritized to scope my work and make sure I finished this project within the time constraint. Given the difficulty of finding users, I was behind by a few days, so this exercise was more important than ever. This morphed into a feature add and redesign project.
When prioritizing each theme, I considered the impact it would have on the user’s experience and how much effort it would take to make these changes. This meant sizing each change from XS to XL. The quick wins (size XS and S) were grouped with themes and were part of the prioritization.
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Pay rate
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Filtering
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Search & brand function and results
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Onboarding experience
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Review cards & trust
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Content curation & personalization
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Community & resources
DESIGN EXPLORATIONS
Exploring mobile app design patterns to identify layout options. These include apps in the dating, social media, professional, travel, and restaurant spaces.
Describe your image
Describe your image
Design
Used pattern explorations as inspiration for initial sketches and took them to design crit for feedback. A few iterations were made before usability testing:
ITERATION
Feedback: “The flow feels lengthy and might cause people to drop halfway… giving users the option to skip and make edits to their profile later are essential here.”
To take this into account, I made completing your profile optional rather than required. I originally made it a requirement because it would share the pay estimate to the users, which is the value of completing the flow. However, thinking back to user interviews, Group A, those who had used Clara mentioned they were curious to see what the app looked like and what it offered. Thinking back to this, I made the following changes:
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Shortened the flow by only asking for the most important information. I referred back to the Collabstr pay estimate variables needed to do this.
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Added a ‘skip’ button.
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Gave users the option to take a peek at what their profile would look like once complete.
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Added a banner to the homepage as a reminder for those who opted to skip the profile setup flow.
Profile setup flow
Describe your image
Describe your image
ITERATION
Review card layout
Feedback: “Think of what might be too much information up front for the user.”
There were variations of cards I decided from and couldn’t narrow down what layout made the most sense. Narrowing down the most important pieces of info required me to refer to my user interview notes. It was apparent users were interested in knowing the following:
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Review verification to confirm this creator actually worked with this brand, especially if it’s an anonymous review.
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How closely this reviewer's profile matches theirs, along with follower count and the number of years they’ve been creating content.
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Type of content created.
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How much they were paid.
Testing
USABILITY TESTING
Uncovering a few key insights from testing and prioritizing by time remaining vs. impact.
ITERATION
Notifications
The options given to users on whether they would like to receive notifications is too complex for this app.
ITERATION
Aside from making some quick chanes, I defined what the long-term solution could be as well.
Importing content
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Short-term: Continue the current way users import content
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Long-term: Add additional step in onboarding flow
Communicating with brands
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Short-term: Website link
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Long-term: In-app communication between brands and creators
Importing insights
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Short-term: Profile creation answers
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Long-term: Import insights feature
Learnings & Next Steps
LEARNINGS
The most important learnings from this project
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Sometimes there is limited access to users but it comes down to how resourceful you can be and thinking of the next "best" user.
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How important it is to incorporate a UX audit into your design process.
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Why designers should be aware of design patterns in other industries because certain design patterns may be useful for you.
NEXT STEPS
If I had more time, I would...
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Design the long-term solutions for the app, rather than sticking with the short-term solutions I designed.