Vidsy

Vidsy connected brands with motion graphics creators. The creator experience depended on Facebook Messenger, at a time when the audience was leaving Facebook. Meanwhile the briefing team built every brief as an HTML page, with tags, inline styles and whatever personal touches each author preferred. Two briefs could look nothing alike. Creators couldn’t reliably find what they needed, and anyone writing a brief had to know how to code.

The starting brief was to design an independent, responsive creator experience. Looking at the work behind it widened the scope to the team’s production process and then to brand approval.

A motion graphics creator working from a brief, a production manager reviewing submissions and a brand signing off assets all need different things, so consistency didn’t mean identical screens.

The production loopOne connected workflow

01 PlanBrands

Briefs, contracts and approvals.

02 CoordinateThe team

Briefing, selection and review.

03 MakeCreators

Find work, create and submit.

From Messenger and manual HTMLTo a connected production platform

• Creator platform (light). Explore paid projects, read preview briefs, express interest, accept terms, follow the full brief and submit work.
• Team platform (dark). Build briefs without code, assemble creator rosters, track project stages, review footage, request changes and authorise payments.
• Brand platform (dark). Sign off briefs, review contracts, approve or reject video, track delivery and download approved asset packs.

Workshops with creators and the briefing team set the requirements. Staff needed to write briefs quickly and consistently. Creators needed to find information while they worked. A brief isn’t a one-off form: creators went back to it throughout a job to check references, mandatory elements and, later, export specifications, often with the brief open next to their editing software.

Hand-coded HTML gave way to a structured template: a fixed section order (overview, creative direction, inspiration, must-haves, delivery specs), a simplified editor, writing guidance, quick links and floating navigation. Testing found the new format easier to navigate and the writing easier to understand. A content guide helped the team write clearer, more consistent briefs. Brief creation took up to half the time.

The chatbot’s project alerts became a browsable job board. Cards led with imagery, the brand name and logo, industry tags and pay, and creators could filter to find work that suited them. Opening a project showed a preview brief: enough to decide whether to express interest, without exposing anything protected by client NDAs. Selected creators then accepted the full brief and started.

The internal team built 10-person rosters by reviewing previous work, portfolios and ratings, then dragging creators into the group. The same people kept getting picked, and new talent rarely got a chance.

Each project now had a coin budget. Commonly chosen, higher-tier creators cost more coins and newcomers cost less. Teams could go over budget, but that flagged the decision to a manager. Tiering considered recent work, completed projects, quality ratings and bonus rewards. It was internal only and didn’t change creators’ pay.

Most rosters began including about four new creators out of ten. Some of them later became regular, higher-tier contributors themselves.

Creators uploaded drafts and internal reviewers were notified. Reviewers needed tools made for motion graphics, not a generic play button: precise scrubbing, timestamped comments, safe-area overlays, device bezels, and a side-by-side view of the original and the revision.

Quality controlFrame comparison

Version 01, original

Motion
check

Version 02, revised

Motion
check

Precise scrubbingTimestamped commentsSafe areasDevice previews

Brands got a deliberately simpler version: approve a video, or reject it with a reason. They kept the safe-area overlays and device previews because those matter when signing off finished work. Workshops with brands surfaced other frustrations, such as remembering which videos had been reviewed, knowing who had delivered, and collecting finished assets. Project status became clearer, and approved asset packs could be downloaded directly.

Some engineers had never worked with UX and challenged much of the process. Immediate agreement wasn’t expected. Instead, engineers joined the research, saw the evidence and could follow how design decisions were made.

• Research. Workshops with creators, internal teams and brands, weekly design reviews and rapid tests in Maze. Research frameworks let PMs and cross-functional teams validate customer problems independently. When COVID moved research online, remote sessions also reached creators outside London.
• Design system. A shared Sketch component library supported three experiences. Light mode suited brief-heavy reading on the creator platform, dark modes suited video review. The internal brief editor used light mode to match the creator view.
• Delivery. Daily work with PMs and engineers, requirements written into tickets, and testing after implementation. Specs covered colour contrast, keyboard navigation, screen readers and layouts that cope with larger text.
• Leadership. After two years as the only designer, a junior graduate joined the team. Shadowing and mentoring came first, then independent work on the internal platform, where daily contact with users made learning practical.

Operational effort fell by 50% through workflow redesign and automation, and brief creation took up to half the time. The production cycle shortened from roughly six to eight weeks to three to four. About four in ten roster places now go to new creators. The creator platform also saw a substantial rise in registrations, though there is no reliable figure to quote.

UX also became a function in its own right: research methods, accessibility requirements, a shared design foundation and a closer relationship with engineering. That became the basis for how Kyra was set up.

Results come from work delivered with Product, Engineering, operations and clients. The briefing improvement is an “up to” figure and the turnaround ranges are approximate.