How I helped TikTok’s Monetization team develop scalable trust programs, driving a 20% reduction in penalized accounts
Team
Product Manager
Product Designer
SDE
Timeline
Aug 2024 - Sept 2024
Role
Product Design & Research
Context
Impact
Penalized Accounts (decrease)
-30%
Program Launch Time (decrease)
-75%
Satisfaction Score
4.4/5.0
Management Cost (reduction)
-80%
Design
Reduce cognitive overload
Creation tasks are divided into stages to enhance focus, simplify completion, and effectively manage complexity
Easy linking
Facilitating seamless connections between various components of the TAP program for users.
Powerful debugging
Easily search for advertisers, view their current status and details, access benefit history, and track which benefits were applied and when.
Standardization for design consistency
Standardizing components ensures consistency and a cohesive user experience across products. This streamlines development and creation of custom components.
Problem
Make it easy for users to launch and modify integrity treatments.
Accelerate the deployment of benefits and reliance on engineering teams.
Ensuring all our stakeholders use x new system for managing benefits program.
Process
Engineering-led development caused design inconsistencies, usability issues, and fragmentation.
Lack of PM and engineers strains development, slowing progress and collaboration.
Lack of user requirements risks misalignment and poor adoption with only infrastructure improvements
Research
Since we were designing a completely new product from scratch, I aimed to reduce uncertainty and ensure the solution aligned with user expectations. To support this, I conducted contextual inquiry sessions with 7 Benefits Center stakeholders to explore:
What did we learn?
Slow iteration
Adding new segments or benefits requires extensive development and collaboration across various systems, causing slow updates and limited responsiveness to business needs.
Poor visibility
TAP Governance and XFN partners historically had inadequate transparency regarding how benefits and protections are allocated to different segments
Lengthy offline operations
Handling urgent escalations involves a slow, multi-system process, with solutions often being siloed
Lengthy offline operations
Handling urgent escalations involves a slow, multi-system process, with solutions often being siloed
High management cost
Significant configuration needs by product operation teams required for new segment and accounts growth
Limited blocklist coverage
The blocklist function was limited to account-level protection removal only, not content-level protection
What does each user's journey look like?
How does the elements in the creation process map?
Conceptualization
I began by translating user requirements and system design into conceptual sketches. From there, I developed low-fidelity designs, prioritizing clarity and gathering key insights as outlined below.
I conducted multiple interviews and identified key changes for the next design iteration based on the insights gathered
Users needed the capability to create comprehensive questionnaires with enhanced features.
Faster Editing Access
Users need the ability to search for an advertiser, review their current status, and access the change log
Learnings
Start with Understanding, Not Ideation
One key learning from my project is the importance of deeply understanding the process and how users interact with existing tools. In complex workflows, speaking the same language as users ensures that our design ideas are truly relevant and effective. Jumping into solutions too quickly, without this context, often leads to missed opportunities.
Seek out feedback early and continually
It is essential to keep stakeholders and users in the loop and test solutions when necessary. It does not have to be the finished product, but testing early saves time and rework. This also allows the team to obtain sign-off from stakeholders.