bdg flipcards & hotspots

Bustle Digital Group (BDG) is a global media company home to 11 brands reaching one of the largest Millenial and Gen Z audiences. Tasked with creating dynamic and engaging products for a variety of content use cases, I developed both flipcards and hotspots - available across all 11 brands.

My Role

Lead Product Designer & UX Researcher

The Problem

BDG needs new and innovative products to create unique content for both sponsored units and editorial stories. Holiday season poses an optimal time to roll out new products for use cases such as gift guides. Teams are currently limited by products lacking interactive and personalized experiences.

Objective

Design and execute interactive products using existing elements in the codebase, that are scalable across all 11 brands for both desktop and mobile.

CROSS FUNCTIONAL INTERVIEWS

To better understand the task, I spoke with both editorial and sales teams to hear what type of content they feel they are currently limited to, and what type of content they would like to be producing. What are our competitors doing that we aren’t? What content typically performs well during the holiday season? Are there any hacks editors are using to achieve certain goals?

COMPETITIVE RESEARCH

I researched what solutions other companies had used for gift guide content and similar use cases. I digested the content on competitors’ sites - understanding how we could use the tools available at BDG to create products using similar principles. These included but weren’t limited to: interactive, customized, and animated content experiences.

DESIGN OPPORTUNITIES

Once the product discovery process was complete, I landed on two potential design solutions: flipcards and hotspots. Both solutions could be built using existing components within our content management system and design libraries. They give editors room for creativity in executing content year-round with the opportunity to provide autonomy to users, enabling more customized experiences.

Live Examples: Sample 1 | Sample 2 | Sample 3 |Sample 4 | Sample 5

Since its launch, the flipcard product has earned BDG over $3 million in revenue.

Flipcards can be used across several content use cases as stand alone experiences and as an addition to long-form content. This product required minimal effort by engineering as it leverage several existing components within the code base including our media, product, and paragraph cards. Best practice suggests using either a media or paragraph card on the ‘front’ of the flipcard and any of the 3 card types on the ‘back’. Below is an example illustrating how each card design is scalable across several different aspect ratios.

Examples illustrating the dynamic ways in which flipcards may be used:

• Question/answer

• Test your knowledge

• Before/after

• Swap this for that

• Product recommendations

• Calendars

• A-Z gift guide

• Character profiles

• Buy this if you like that

• Step-by-step guides

• Astrological signs

• Spoiler warnings

• Jokes/punch lines