Research on Tiktok content creator’s characteristics, growth phases, and paint points to create better user experience on Xingtu
COMPANY
ByteDance Ltd.
TYPE
Full-time
DURATION
3 months
KEYWORDS
B2B Product
Persona
Information Archiecture
MY ROLE
User Researcher
TECHNIQUE USED
Semi-structured Interview
Survey
Card Sorting
Persona
Qualitative Coding
Affinity Diagram
CLOSELY WORK WITH
3 Product Managers
2 Operation Managers
2 UX Designers
2 Software Engineers
DELIVERABLE
Research Report
Re-invented information archiecture
User Persona for content creators
Presentation to 200+ colleagues
WORK SUMMARY
Between Fall 2020 and Fall 2021, I took a gap year to work as a full-time UX Researcher at the ByteDance. I was part of the User Experience Team in Monetization Department and took on various initiatives to improve the user experience of multiple monetization products of Tiktok, including, OceanXingtu, OceanEngine, and Ads Review platforms, etc. During my time working in ByteDance, I closely worked with multiple Product Managers, UX Designers, Content Managers and Software Engineers, and spearheaded several research projects to
BACKGROUND
PROBLEM
How Might We
‍
How might we better understand the content creator’s characteristics, growth phases, use case scenarios, and pain points, so that we could better understand their behaviors and address the problems they have with Xingtu?
Since the Xingtu platform launched, over 150w content creators joined to seek collaboration opportunities. Between 2018 and 2021, content creators grew up rapidly and dramatically redefined their new role as content creators. However, the team’s cognition about the content creators is not up-to-date, mostly stays in the place, and therefore has a poor understanding of their behaviors. Besides, the team wanted to conduct product iterations by addressing existing user problems and developing new features, which need some input from the content creators.
GOAL
Personal Level
  • Understand the characteristics of different types of content creators
  • Understand the growth phases for content creators within Xingtu
  • Understand the use case scenarios for both mobile app and desktop application
Behavioral Level
  • Understand the actual process of accepting orders from the client
  • Identify the pain points of accepting orders from the client
Special Points
  • Understand content creator’s idea for
  • schedule feature
  • price feature
  • promote feature
PROGRESS
METHOD
We took a mixed-method approach to study user behaviors and built user personas for Tiktok/Douyin content creators. We first sent out surveys (including screening questions) to quantitatively collect users’ high-level attitudes, opinions, and knowledge about Xingtu, as well as demographic data. We then conducted 23 semi-structured interviews and 23 card-sorting sessions in person. Then, we analyzed the data from the interviews, survey, and card-sorting results and created three content creator personas. After that, we closely worked with UX Designers to ideate potential solutions for the issues we found and ways to better assist content creators to grow up within the Xingtu platform. Finally, we wrote the research report and did a presentation for 150+ colleagues in our team.
Survey
Design
The survey is designed to screen potential participants, and quantitatively collect information about content creators’ high-level attitudes, opinions, and knowledge about the Xingtu platform.

(** Due to confidentiality concerns, I would not be able to show the actual survey here
Sample
We randomly sampled XXX users based on the following criteria:
1. Creator Type: self-served
2. Activity status: login >1  in the most recent 30 days
3. Number of followers: 10-500w
Interview
We used the survey response to further filtered out 50 interview candidates based on:
In the end, we conducted 23 in-person interviews in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu.
Card Sorting
Followed by the interview, we conducted 23 card-sorting with the same participants.
Analysis
After interview, I first wrote a report for each individual interview using notes and video recordings. After that, I used affinity diagram and qualitative coding to analyze interview data in order to create constructive answers to the questions we had before the research. Then, I wrote a research report to present my results and did a presentation to my colleages
** Due to privacy concerns, I'm not able to show the analysis process in detail
RESULT
FINDING 1
Self-served content creators seek a balance between self-expression and monetization
FINDING 2
‍Xingtu is perceived as a tool for accepting offers, a platform that is passively used by content creators
FINDING 3
‍Content creators’ ability for monetization largely depends on the content direction. Operation status (for interest or for the job) is not the major factor.
Persona
After several rounds of qualitative coding and affinity diagram analysis session, I created three personas to represent the current self-served Douyin content creators on Xingtu platform.
Growth Phase in Xingtu
Content creators mainly experience four stages of growth phase, from “account planning”, “1st interact with Xingtu”, “Passively use Xingtu” to “Actively use Xingtu”. I created the diagram below to mark the opportunities to help assist the growth for conten creators.
Recommendations for Optimization
After analyzing the results, I did a quick pitch with related PMs and designers to share out my findings. Then, after several rounds of communication, we together ideated recommendations for optimization.
IDEATE
I then shared the research results with UX Designers and held co-working session  to ideate solutions for the exisitng issues. We together created prototypes and reinvented the information aritchecture.

** Due to privacy concerns, I am not able to show the prototype here.
Reinvented Information Archiecture
IMPLEMENTATION & PUBLISH
After the presentation, I then closely worked with the developer team to further assist them implementing the new features.As of Aug.2021, 5  features has been published, including:
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© 2022 By Krystal Zeng