migme is a global digital media company but at its core, a social network with 33+ million monthly active users from emergent markets like Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, the Philippines and Vietnam.
migme has been around for 13 years and though having been through a few brand refreshes, the product design became especially outdated in the years 2010s as new design languages like material design and flat design were introduced and popularized. I joined the team in 2015 to help the team build a new design system and revamp the product's experience.
User's social status, one of the platform's long-lasting features, was among the experiences in need of an upgrade. mig users can acquire labels to distinguish themselves from other users based on their popularity, roles and activities on the platform. We launched our field research to identify our user personas and opportunities to make this feature front and center to users. Here are our findings:
mig's customers live in areas with less or limited internet access. We found some common traits amongst our users based on in-depth market research into the internet usage of our targeted markets and a field research ran in Indonesia:
The field research led to a behavior analysis exercise that helped us narrow down our user personas.
On the user journey there are specific moments where users will see user labels and/or want to acquire user labels. Understanding where these moments were and the online world the mig community occupies was essential to the solution phase:
Our initiatives for this project include:
The first problem that we identified was the complexity of the legacy label system.
Through regrouping similar labels with the same a) metaphors (semantics) and b) powers (extra privileges and features on the platform like blocking users from a chatroom), we managed to reduce the number of labels to four:
The introduction of these new labels introduced a new challenge of migrating our old users onto the new system as well as onboarding new users to familiarize with the hierarchy and social structure of the platform. With that in mind, we started exploring the user journeys of these 2 distinct groups and moved onto try out the swim lane flow chart method to understand not only the user task flows but also what happened in the backend.
Referenced from the social engagement loop, as defined by Zicherman & Cunningham, 2011, we needed to show: a) visible progress and reward for users who are aspiring to acquire a label,
b) motivating emotion by celebrating the reward or acquisition of a label,
c) social call to action through sharing the rewards and engaging more on the platform, and
d) a reengagement strategy through leveling up or acquiring other labels.
The solution we arrived at provided all users with more visibility and emphasis on the importance and weight of the social status system:
We took this opportunity to add new graphic elements into the mig platform to strengthen the brand language as well as adding more fun into the whole experience.
Acquiring a new label is now a social experience that can be shared with other users, displayed and celebrated.
Understanding the power of integrating series feedback loops in which a user engages in an action, receives feedback or rewards, and gratification, feels encouraged to reengage and perform the next action has enabled our team to build a social status system in migme that not only increased engagement but also loyalty and user satisfaction. The system was welcomed by our old users thanks to our migration plan and by our new users as they are enticed by the fun graphics and this distinctively different feature in migme as compared to other social networks. We understood that our user demographics' needs are unique and differ from the user demographics of other social network giants like Facebook or LinkedIn therefore a completely different approach and community must be built to satisfy those needs.
My time in mig came to an end shortly after drafting and running the field research, analyzing and synthesizing the user personas, and finally launching the new label system but I carry the learnings with me. The project resonated with me, being from Vietnam and growing up with the same shared desire to reach out to the world outside but spending most of my adult life in Singapore. Needs, desires and world views can shift and change therefore constant engagement with targeted users is a must in order to continuously shape the products to serve the right needs and solve to the right problems.