I was Lead Designer at Bullhorn.fm, our podcast creation dashboard from MVP to a market ready state. We built a robust podcast recording and editing studio and needed to craft an equally powerful dashboard for users to publish episodes and manage their channels.
During my time working on the Bullhorn.fm dashboard, based on focus groups and user feedback, we elevated the early version of the product to be more informative and helpful in managing a larger channel especially focused on monetized creators.
Timeframe
2021 - 2022
Role
Lead Product Designer
Platform
Desktop
Category
SaaS, Media
Bullhorn Studio Dashboard
Evaluating our current platform in a saturated market
While still in a early stage, at Bullhorn we mainly prioritized user growth and building our brand in an already over crowded space. When our user base began to see steady growth, we felt that our creators could utilize more control over their recordings by allowing them to also publish via the platform. It became evident that with the addition of monetization and channels, we were going to need a more dedicated dashboard tailored to larger content creators rather than indie podcasts.
We started a creator outreach incentive to get real user feedback on the potential improvements and what our creators want to see added and would utilize to grow their channels. These creator relationships were key in building a strong understanding of our user's needs and ultimately fostering greater user retention. We audited our current main pages and compiled our own thoughts as well as user feedback.
Dashboard
Our current home screen utilizes a lot of space without offering any real value to the user. The information hierarchy is near non-existent and leads to the user being unsure where to look and what this information means to them.
For new users, the dashboard is empty as they have no data to show until they start creating episodes or connect to an existing podcast. New adopters are given no clear path to get started leading to a massive drop-off in user retention after sign up.
Monetization
The monetization dashboard comes with similar problems that the analytics page suffers from as well as needing to add new functionality for editing subscriptions and connecting your account to Stripe.
There are various revenue streams that a user can utilize that are not tracked on the current dashboard. Adding elements to the screen to provide more monetary information can help a user know where their income is coming from and how to continue growth.
Analytics
The analytics dashboard is also poorly utilizing the space on the page. The choice of using bar graphs is inefficient for tracking growth over time as the number of subscribers could go up or down depending on the day.
Other metrics that users would want track such as interactions and where the views are coming from are not present on this screen. Overall, the information provided holds very little value to users looking to track their channel statistics and make informed decisions to continue growth.
Competitive Analysis
I started by taking a quick dive into some functional dashboards that are commonly used. What do people come to expect when viewing a dashboard? How is information presented to the user? How do they handle navigating the different pages? These research findings will be shared with other members of the design team to align on goals and get any feedback before moving into initial designs.
View Notes
Wireframing the new features
I started by creating a design for the side navigation including some icons to help with direction for future iconography. Once I had the basic layout set up, I added some more detail to the elements to showcase how they might appear in the final product.
During this process I began developing what would become the new design system for dashboard pages. It's important to start building this out as early as possible to maintain consistency across all dashboard tabs. I started with establishing a typography hierarchy and adding some new colors to the palette before deciding on parameters for spacing and margins.
Getting user feedback
Once barebones wireframes were created, we conducted user tests again to study whether elements made sense on screen, were easily understandable, and located where users would expect to find them. These tests were unmoderated and testers were given a simple list of items or actions we asked them to locate on screen or attempt to complete.
The results of the user testing led to us moving some items around on the page, the modular setup for the dashboard made this easy to accomplish as we were able to rearrange the boxes as needed. On some pages, we added more descriptive text to items as well as some changes in iconography to be more in line with what people come to expect.
One big takeaway from the user tests was the need for more tooltips and tutorials across the board to function as a backup for any confusing or unclear items in the future. This ask will need to be pushed to another project in the future that we can maintain for any future use across the product.
Results
The updated dashboard designs offer a fresh revitalization to the interface as well as adding new elements to make it easier for users to access important information. Each screen was given dedicated time to create and implement solutions to the biggest challenges we were facing.
Home Screen
The updated home screen removes a lot of unnecessary negative space and condenses statistics into a single element. The addition of an action bar informs the user of all actions they can take to get started creating. We added a calendar view for easy monitoring of episode releases and quick access to edit any published or upcoming episodes. We've also added a space for notifications or any messages we may want to inform the user of including but not limited to visual and functionality updates.
Monetization
The monetization page includes new boxes for different revenue streams and a place to update your subscription, Stripe account, and a tip jar. A transaction log is included at the bottom of the page to track any earnings as well as any fees that are coming out of your wallet as well as a quick option for exporting the CSV file.
Analytics
The analytics page boasts a whole set of new information and statistics to help users track their channel growth. This includes stats about viewership for different types of broadcasts and interaction stats for different interactive elements used in episodes. This helps users know what kind of content their audience is enjoying and can continue to move in the direction that viewers want. The graphs used for information have also been updated to be more clear and more manageable for tracking different information over time.
