Problem Validation // UX Exploration
Context
Viki's subtitling community comprises of drama fans with linguistic capabilities and an inherent passion to help viewers across the world access their favourite dramas in their own language. Viki relies considerably on such fans / contributors to subtitle dramas into over 150 languages for its viewers the world over. But for a while now, the activation rate i.e. signed up contributors making their first subtitle contribution had been rather low, in single digits. The team was unsure what caused this low activation rate, and we set out to uncover these blockers.
Challenge:
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Ensuring all voices are heard - new contributors are often shy / unmotivated to sign up for chats with Viki team
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A long time may have passed since sign up to date, and contributors may not adequately recall what went wrong
Approach: qualitative exploration
We reached out to newly signed up contributors yet to make their first contribution via our CRM, and incentivised well to entice them to sign up for a chat. Through them, we were able to surface key blockers and early points of confusion leading them to give up on their onboarding journey.
Additionally, we supplemented the sample with viewers who expressed openness to sign up as contributors - goal being to observe them go through the contributor onboarding experience first hand to surface blockers.
We found that the blockers were not limited to post sign-up spaces, but in fact the blockers began right from their entry point to the community landing page not setting the right expectations. The subsequent journey thus did not fit / flow seamlessly, coupled with additionally blockers on the type, quantity, and manner of information communication.
In sum, the entire onboarding process needed a revamp.
Snapshots from the Hackathon: problem statement based on research findings, teams in action, whiteboard brainstorming, and a Miro board consolidating all solutions to run a Rose-Thorn-Bud exercise to determine an optimal way forward




Impact:
✔️ 3 problem statements identified that were put into a hackathon for quick and radical ideation by cross-functional teams
✔️ Community Development team upcycled a guiding video on how contributions work, to share with new contributors as a quick win
✔️ Research team invited to design ideation sessions to take forward hackathon solutions for implementation
Solution development and implementation in progress.