Patreon
Memorisely cohort based Bootcamp Project
December – February 2025
As part of my capstone project for web application, I worked as a UI/UX designer. The goal was to enhance the discoverability of creatives on Patreon by boosting the engagement and expand support for a diverse range of creators.
Patreon has established itself as a vital platform for creatives to receive support and funding directly from their fans. However, the current discovery process for potential patrons primarily relies on a basic search input field, which can be limiting in terms of exposing the diversity and breadth of talent on the platform.
Context
Overview
Creating an easy discoverability feature was one of most rewarding experience for me. Having worked with painters, video artists and directors for most of my life, creating a this experience for Patreon as a platform which connects fans to the creators and generate revenue directly was a wholesome experience for me.
My role
As a product designer, I was responsible for designing the UI, UX, rendering layouts, and creating prototypes. I primarily collaborated with cohort designer Gargi Surve. I created frameworks and prototypes to share the vision, design principles, and content strategy. This helped to conceptualize ideas, gain alignment, and drive decision making.
Timeline
Over the six week timeline, we had four creative reviews where mentors Margherita Gonzola and Illinca gave feedback and critiques, and mentor Bobby Shaw gave reviews where multiple stakeholders gave higher-level business direction. I roughly had four weeks of total design time, as I had six days for the initial design development and then 2-3 days between reviews for edits.
Project Brief
Business Goal
The primary goal for us was to enhance the discoverability of creatives on Patreon, thereby increasing patron engagement and support for a wider range of creators. This improvement needed to lead to increased patronage, higher creator satisfaction, and overall growth in the platform’s user base and revenue.
The task was to,
Research, ideate and redesign the Patreon “Find creators” experience to make it more engaging, personalized, and effective in connecting patrons with creatives that match their interests.
User Segment
The focus was on new and existing patrons who are interested in exploring and supporting creatives across various genres but may not have specific creators in mind.
Design Process
User Research
Generative User Interviews:
We conducted five interviews with individuals who are not current users of Patreon. During the interview process we had some questions where they navigated the platform in front of us. Observing the users gave us insights in understanding their content preferences, discoverability expectations, and perceived barriers to supporting creators on such platforms. The aim of this generative research was to inform us the development of a user-centric discovery experience.
User Preferences
“I would have loved to hear a snippet of the music of this person to see whether I like them or not before I join. A free trial or an example of soft or a lot of detail about something before I put money behind it would be important to me.”
– Interviewer 01, Research Scientist
“Suppose the personal recommendation from a friend or a voice you already know, a content creator you already trust is valuable to me.”
– Interviewer 02, Lawyer
Synthesis in Dovetail: Categorisation
Data Synthesis in AI
Usability Audit and Competitor Benchmarking
Further we conducted usability audit to understand the pain points of the existing experience.
Method: Heuristic evaluation based on Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics + user flow walkthrough + competitor benchmarking.
Usability Audit
Direct Competitors
We observed that the Direct Competitors:
- Showcased their work
- Engaged with their audience
- Tracked progress to inspire patron support
Indirect Competitors
