Discuss is a B2B web-based platform that provides tools for scheduling, running, and analyzing qualitative market research. A key feature of Discuss is its video-conferencing tool, which allows users to conduct and record interviews and focus groups within the platform. If a user does not want to use Discuss to run their interview sessions, they can upload their own video files into the platform for a fee.
In this case study, I cover my redesign of the flow for uploading these video files—which was driven by an influx of new customer requests. As a result of my redesign, I satisfied a long-standing customer request while also significantly reducing task completion time and improving the user experience.
Lead Designer
Discuss
Web
UX/UI Design, User Flows, Wireframes, Prototypes
Uploads of off-platform recordings on Discuss have historically seen minimal interest and usage. However, this changed with the recent release of Genie, our generative-AI tool that creates text-based summaries of interview recordings. What used to take days to extract insights from a set of recordings could now be accomplished in minutes.
This new capability generated significant interest from clients, with several expressing the desire to start projects exclusively containing off-platform research for use with Genie. One client even stated that they planned to upload and summarize hundreds of hours of video content.
Despite the growing demand, our existing file upload flow was unequipped for this use case, as it only allowed for one file to be uploaded at a time among other limitations. To capitalize on the interest in summarizing off-platform research, we needed to redesign and streamline our file upload experience.
By targeting usability heuristics that the existing flow fell short of, I designed a new and streamlined upload experience that benefits new and existing users alike. As a result of this redesign, I was able to:
Diagram of original upload user flow. Steps that were removed in the final flow are marked with a red 'X.'
The final delivered upload flow
Although I left the company before I could see my designs implemented and their impact on users, some of the projected outcomes were:
Comparisons of these numbers for customers with Genie subscriptions vs. customers without Genie subscriptions could also help illustrate how my redesigned upload flow impacted the above metrics without the influence of Genie.
Prototype demonstrating the finalized flow that I designed for uploading off-platform research (start by scrolling down).
I started this project in November 2023 as the Design Lead and worked in a small team consisting of a Product Manager and an Engineer Lead. I was responsible for all UX and UI design from end-to-end, up until I handed off my designs to the Engineer Lead.
Responsibilities:
I began this project before all of its requirements were officially defined, with the understanding that additional ones would be provided later by the Product Manager. The only requirement I had at the beginning was that the new upload flow must support multiple files per upload.
To kick off my design process, I performed an informal heuristic evaluation of the existing upload flow using Nielsen Norman's 10 usability heuristics. During this evaluation, I identified three primary heuristics where our current flow fell short and used those to guide my design decisions throughout the project. These three heuristics were...
"Minimize the user's memory load by making elements, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the interface to another."
To begin a file upload, users must first click on the Insights top nav and then the Recordings sub nav (Steps 1 and 2 below). Next, they must expand the Tools & Downloads dropdown (Step 3) and select the upload option (Step 4). The buried placement of this entry point forces users to search for it and harms feature discoverability for new users.
Numbered callouts (1-4) depicting the steps required to begin the existing file upload flow
"Shortcuts — hidden from novice users — may speed up the interaction for the expert user so that the design can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users."
Not only are users forced to start uploads from the Recordings page, they also must specify the language of the file before it can be uploaded. The amount of clicks this requires makes for a tedious experience. At minimum, it takes 9 clicks to upload a file when starting from the platform home page and 7 clicks when starting from the Recordings page.
Breakdown of clicks needed to start an upload:
"The design should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable amount of time."
After a video file is uploaded to Discuss it must undergo post-processing before it becomes visible in the platform. Post-processing often takes more time than the initial file upload itself. However, there are no progress indicators or any mention that this is a required step. This can cause confusion for the user when their file upload is "completed" but the video is nowhere to be found and will be even more of an issue once multiple files can be uploaded at a time.
After my heuristic evaluation, I mapped out a user flow of the current upload experience. This helped me visualize where the flow could be tweaked to incorporate bulk uploads and improve usability as well as which steps must be carried over.
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Diagram of the current upload flow which takes 9 clicks to open the file picker, select a file, specify language, and upload it.
I then mapped out alternative user flows. I started with an "ideal upload flow," meant to be my vision of the shortest and simplest possible way of uploading files. Because the ideal flow relied on two technical assumptions that I hadn't yet confirmed with the Engineer Lead, I also explored additional flows without those assumptions.
Proposed ideal upload flow
This ideal flow was created under two major technical assumptions:
Because these assumptions hadn't yet been confirmed with the Engineer Lead, I also explored additional flows independent of these assumptions.
At this point, I began exploring designs for my proposed ideal flow (while also fleshing out some of the alternative flows on the side). My first iteration of designs focused on:
Overview page design with newly added section for uploading off-platform research
New Upload section designs with drag-and-drop functionality and upload status
After receiving feedback from the Product team during a design critique, my next iterations revolved around:
Next iteration of Upload Recordings section and Upload Progress Cards
I also explored alternate designs of the file upload status cards that included progress steppers, as I thought that informing users of all the steps involved up front would be helpful. In the end, I opted for a plainer design with no stepper as this design choice was based on a hunch and adding one would introduce more complexity for the engineers.
Exploration of various Upload Progress Card designs with steppers to give users additional context into the upload process.
At this point, I formally met with the Lead Engineer to discuss my designs and their feasibility in depth. This conversation was insightful and revealed several things contrary to my initial design assumptions:
I worked with him to revise my designs so that they adhered to technical constraints and minimized engineering debt, while still delivering the optimal user experience that I envisioned.
My final iterations resulted in:
Final designs for various Upload Section states (empty, uploaded, error, limit reached)
Final page designs (Overview page empty state, Upload in progress state, Overview page uploaded state, and Recordings page with new dropdown menu design)
This project was unique for me in that I worked alongside an assigned Engineer Lead for its entirety. In past projects, designers would send any questions or requests in the #dev Slack channel and whoever had time or expertise would assist. Having a dedicated engineering perspective to help guide my design decisions was invaluable. However, this project was not without its hiccups.
Due to differing schedules and priorities, the Engineer Lead wasn't able to build a proof-of-concept (PoC) to validate my initial design proposals until after I had already done several rounds of iterations. After the PoC was presented, I discovered several aspects of my designs that were either unfeasible or were based on incorrect technical assumptions.
Despite this, I had prepared several alternative designs in the event that my favored design solution did not pan out. I reviewed these designs with the Engineer Lead and together we chose the optimal workaround. I was then able to confidently deliver an improved final solution that met our design, technical, and business requirements.
This new upload flow would not have been possible, or would have at least taken much longer to produce, had I not been able to work so closely with an Engineer Lead. I look forward to future projects where I have the privilege of designing with and learning from developers, and am excited to see what we can accomplish.
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