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Digital Product · UX Research · Dec 2023 to Feb 2024

Bada TV

Every item on the roadmap rested on a guess about who the users were. I ran a survey first, 1,419 responses, and the answers reordered the list.

Role
UX Designer
Market
Korean immigrants, ages 20 to 60
Platform
Desktop · mobile web
Timeline
Dec 2023 to Feb 2024
Bada TV: The interface I drew once the research was in. A concept, no
The interface I drew once the research was in. A concept, not a build: it shows where the evidence pointed.

What I was handed

Bada.tv was popular and criticised for the same things every month: recurring technical issues, a complex posting flow, and difficulty saving content. Stakeholders wanted community features added on top, to bring new people in.

Nobody could tell me why the people already there came. Google Analytics was installed and returned basic traffic only: no demographics, no occupations, no age groups, no motivation.

Every roadmap decision rested on an assumption about a person nobody had spoken to.

So I didn't start with screens

I wrote a research plan first, around a single question: how do we understand the current experience well enough to improve it for the people already here, while still attracting new ones.

I drafted the demographic questions and the goal questions separately, and the goal questions went through two versions before the survey went out.

Bada TV: plate 1
Bada TV: plate 2
Bada TV: plate 3
Bada TV: plate 4
The plan and the instrument. Two rounds on the goal questions, because those are the ones that decide what the roadmap does next.

What came back

A ten day Hotjar survey returned 1,419 responses. The audience was older than anyone had assumed: 84% were 35 or over and only 18% were under 35, most in North and Central America, most in full or part time work.

The number that decided things was why they came. Of 1,268 respondents, 83% came to view content and 9% came to upload and share it.

The posting flow was at the top of the stakeholder list. Nine per cent of users post.

Two things nobody had raised

Political comments and disrespectful interactions came back as real pain points, sitting alongside the technical issues we already knew about.

And the comparison people were making was not to other Korean platforms. It was to YouTube, Facebook and Reddit, which is a different bar for search, saving and moderation than anyone had been designing against.

Bada TV: plate 1
Bada TV: plate 2
Bada TV: plate 3
Bada TV: plate 4
The findings as they arrived: summary, age split, reason for visiting, and what else people use. The third one is what redirected the work.

What I put in the MVP, and what I moved

  1. 01

    Fix the technical issues

    Kept at the top. This was the one stakeholder priority the research confirmed rather than contradicted.

  2. 02

    Improve content viewing, not posting

    The posting flow came down the list. Navigation and saving went up, because that is what 83% of the audience actually does.

  3. 03

    Moderation before community features

    Stakeholders wanted community features to attract new users. The research turned that into protecting the users already there, starting with moderation for political and disrespectful comments.

How the roadmap turned

STAKEHOLDERSMEUSERS1,419Assumed prioritiesTechnical issues, the postingflow, and community featuresto bring new people in.One question, written downHow do we improve this for thepeople already here whilestill attracting new ones.Ten day survey1,419 responses. Demographicquestions and goal questionsdrafted separately.What the answers said83% come to view, 9% come topost. Two pain points nobodyhad raised.A different order of workViewing up, posting down,moderation ahead of communityfeatures.Roadmap changedAccepted, then stopped atdesign for cost reasons.
The only arrow that was not in the original brief is the middle one. Everything downstream of it exists because somebody asked the users first.

What happened next

Stakeholders were open to the findings rather than defensive about them, which is the part that made the research worth running. I was able to push the feature and UI recommendations that came out of it, and the roadmap changed.

It stopped at design. The build was not funded, for cost reasons, so what exists is a research backed direction rather than a shipped product. The research changed the decision. The decision did not survive the budget.