Discord's 8th Birthday
Led Discord's 8th Birthday design, boosting week-over-week retention to 30% and drawing 48M unique users. My leadership aligned teams and spiked activity starts by up to 30%.
Product Designer
2023
1 Product Designer, 2 Engineer, 1 PM
UX Design, UI Design, Interaction Design, testing, leadership presentation, cross-functional facilitation.
Goals
As Discord approached its 8th birthday, the celebration presented an opportunity to engage our user base in a new and exciting way. The primary goal was to create a landing surface focused on Discord's Activities For All promotion. We aimed to increase HFU (Highly Frequent Users), build upon the success of our "Game Night" initiative - which made activities free for a weekend, and leverage the exposure to increase attributable Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).
Research
Our initial research revealed some critical insights. Less than half of the polled users were aware that Activities even existed on Discord. Additionally, 15% of users experienced choice paralysis when selecting Activities. However, we found that Nitro conversion rates quadrupled for users who engaged with Nitro-locked Activities. These findings guided our design process, helping us understand where we needed to focus our efforts.
Challenges & Opportunities
Challenges
Time was of the essence, and quick decisions were crucial. We had to prioritize specific features for the initial rollout, leaving some for future iterations. The challenge was to create something engaging and functional within the constraints. Despite changing requirements and tactical pivots, I remained steadfast, adopting an organized "debate, decide, commit" mindset that helped guide the team through quick decisions.
Opportunities
The research provided us with several opportunities:
- • Awareness: Introduce Activities to a broader user base.
- • Messaging: Utilize a top-level spot for more visible messaging.
- • Iteration: Launch a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) and iterate based on user feedback.
Design Solutions
Since 2021 we had hypothesized that the right path forward for Activities, was a top of funnel home that allowed a global view of Activities and a place as a jumping off point for building out things like Leaderboards, more communities, and special drops of content for users. Taking on the work of the 8th Birthday allowed us to start asking if some of these things could indeed be a reality.
In preparation for the Birthday celebration, we developed an early concept featuring a hero image for Discord's birthday and a 'What's New' section. The detail pages included a header image, activity information, and the ability to launch an activity in any voice channel.
We also collaborated with Product Marketing Managers for in-app marketing moments and utilized 1-play video and persistent banner images in the current activity shelf.
My engineering partner, Matt Hova, added some flair in the form of confetti, and Engineer Andrew Giel included a fun Easter egg linking to Nitro promotions.
I played a crucial role as a facilitator between teams, helping them envision how they might best contribute to an important promotional moment while still aligning the design needs with overarching goals. Additionally, I imbued the experience with moments of delight through weekly content drops and other visual or interactive touches as the birthday campaign unfolded over a monthly period.
Results
Despite the constraints, we successfully shipped an MLP with plans for further iteration. The results were beyond our expectations:
- • Week-over-week retention grew from 27% to a steady state of ~30%.
- • 48 million distinct users visited the landing page, accounting for 60% of Desktop/Web Active Users.
- • Activity session starts increased between 13% - 30%, depending on the title.
This project showcased my ability to navigate complex challenges, make rapid decisions, and deliver under pressure. The success of this initiative has paved the way for future improvements, including a mobile version of this type of surface as a top priority.