How We Used User Journey Design to Boost a Creator Platform’s Retention by 30%

Documentation

Back to Home

FROM THE WORK
Yelp: From 2 to 30 - Building a Creative Operating System at Scale
From The Work
IAC - One Lead, Three Brands: The Internal Agency Model
From The Work
AI as a Creative Co-Pilot: A Practical Guide
From The Work
The System Nobody Used
From The Work
How I Built an AI-Human Creative System (And What Actually Worked)
From The Work
Living Like Kevin: How a 25-Year-Old Film Became a $500K Revenue Campaign
From The Work
Why UX Writing is the Most Important Element of Narrative Design in Your Product
From The Work
Why Internal Brand Strategy is Your Most Powerful Growth Engine
From The Work
Why "Data-Driven" is Killing Your Creativity (And Why "Data-Informed" is the Solution)
From The Work
What the Level Design of Dark Souls Can Teach Us About Employee Onboarding
From The Work
What the Architectural Principles of Tadao Ando Can Teach Us About UX Design
From The Work
What is Creative Ops? A Practical Guide to Building a More Efficient Creative Workflow
From The Work
What is "Radical Empathy"? (And Why It's the Most Undervalued Asset in Business and Art)
From The Work
What Hiring Managers in Product and UX Really Want to See in a Creative's Portfolio
From The Work
UX Writing is More Than Microcopy—It's Narrative Design
From The Work
The Storytelling Genius of Video Game "Lore": What Brands Can Learn from Elden Ring
From The Work
The Rise of the Full-Stack Creative: Why Marketing Teams Need to Rethink Creative Roles
From The Work
The Psychology of a Perfect Pitch: How to Frame Your Story to Speak Directly to the Primal Brain
From The Work
The Perfect Creative Brief Template (And Why It Will Save Your Next Project)
From The Work
The Manifesto of the Full-Stack Creative
From The Work
The Full-Stack Triumph of Barbie: Narrative, Marketing, and Product
From The Work
The Full-Stack Deconstruction of a Hit K-Pop Group: A Case Study in Narrative, Product, and Community
From The Work
The Empathetic Leader's Playbook: How to Build Resilient and Innovative Teams
From The Work
The Complete Brand Storytelling Framework: A Step-by-Step Guide
From The Work
The Art of the Post-Mortem: A Creative Leader's Guide to Learning from Wins and Losses
From The Work
The Anatomy of a Flop: A Full-Stack Post-Mortem of Quibi
From The Work
The 7 Essential Tools for Creative Leaders: A Full-Stack Toolkit
From The Work
The 30M Impression Campaign: How Storytelling and Earned Media Turned a Brand Activation into a Cultural Moment
From The Work
The "Unreliable Narrator": A Deeply Creative Trope You Should Be Using in Your Brand Marketing
From The Work
The "Second Brain" for a Full-Stack Creative: My System for Capturing, Connecting, and Creating Ideas
From The Work
The "GTM" is Your Third Act: Applying Narrative Structure to Your Go-to-Market Plan
From The Work
The "Creative Capital" Framework: How to Allocate Your Time and Energy Like a Venture Capitalist
From The Work
The "Chief Narrative Officer": Why This Will Be the Most Important C-Suite Role in the Next Decade
From The Work
Scaling Creative Operations at Yelp: The Systems That Made It Possible
From The Work
Narrative Marketing vs. Performance Marketing: Why Story-Driven Campaigns Win
From The Work
Moonbeam: 0 to Acquisition — Building a TikTok-Style Podcast App from Beta to Exit
From The Work
Leader's Guide to Managing Freelancers and Creative Agencies
From The Work
How to Lead a High-Performing Remote Creative Team
From The Work
Avenues: The World School - Building a Global Brand System Across Two International Campuses
From The Work
How to Build a Brand Voice from Scratch: A Startup Case Study
From The Work
How to Apply Product Thinking to Your Creative Process
From The Work
How We Used User Journey Design to Boost a Creator Platform’s Retention by 30%
From The Work
How We Used Narrative to Increase Audience Reach by 40%: An IAC Case Study
From The Work
How We Drove 30 Million Impressions for Yelp’s National “Servies” Campaign
From The Work
How We Built a Creative Operating System to Increase Campaign Efficiency by 25% at Yelp
From The Work
How We Aligned Creative and Product to Build a Better Content Pipeline at Yelp
From The Work
First Principles Thinking for Creatives: How to Deconstruct Any Story or Brand Problem to its Core
From The Work
Deconstructing Haiku: How the 5-7-5 Structure Can Revolutionize Your UX Microcopy
From The Work
Creative Strategy Isn't Just for Agencies—It's a Core Business Function
From The Work
An Agile Creativity Framework: How to Run Your Creative Team Like a Product Squad
From The Work
AI as a "Creative Co-Pilot": A Practical Guide for Agencies and Studios
From The Work
A Leader's Guide to Managing Freelancers and Creative Agencies
From The Work
GTM Strategy Case Study: How We Launched a Startup MVP
From The Work
5 Enduring Lessons from a Decade of Leading Brand Campaigns
From The Work
World-Building-as-a-Service: The Next Big Agency Model
From The Work

BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Yelp: From 2 to 30 - Building a Creative Operating System at Scale
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
IAC - One Lead, Three Brands: The Internal Agency Model
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
AI as a Creative Co-Pilot: A Practical Guide
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The System Nobody Used
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
How I Built an AI-Human Creative System (And What Actually Worked)
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Living Like Kevin: How a 25-Year-Old Film Became a $500K Revenue Campaign
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Why UX Writing is the Most Important Element of Narrative Design in Your Product
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Why Internal Brand Strategy is Your Most Powerful Growth Engine
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Why "Data-Driven" is Killing Your Creativity (And Why "Data-Informed" is the Solution)
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
What the Level Design of Dark Souls Can Teach Us About Employee Onboarding
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
What the Architectural Principles of Tadao Ando Can Teach Us About UX Design
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
What is Creative Ops? A Practical Guide to Building a More Efficient Creative Workflow
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
What is "Radical Empathy"? (And Why It's the Most Undervalued Asset in Business and Art)
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
What Hiring Managers in Product and UX Really Want to See in a Creative's Portfolio
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
UX Writing is More Than Microcopy—It's Narrative Design
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The Storytelling Genius of Video Game "Lore": What Brands Can Learn from Elden Ring
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The Rise of the Full-Stack Creative: Why Marketing Teams Need to Rethink Creative Roles
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The Psychology of a Perfect Pitch: How to Frame Your Story to Speak Directly to the Primal Brain
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The Perfect Creative Brief Template (And Why It Will Save Your Next Project)
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The Manifesto of the Full-Stack Creative
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The Full-Stack Triumph of Barbie: Narrative, Marketing, and Product
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The Full-Stack Deconstruction of a Hit K-Pop Group: A Case Study in Narrative, Product, and Community
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The Empathetic Leader's Playbook: How to Build Resilient and Innovative Teams
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The Complete Brand Storytelling Framework: A Step-by-Step Guide
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The Art of the Post-Mortem: A Creative Leader's Guide to Learning from Wins and Losses
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The Anatomy of a Flop: A Full-Stack Post-Mortem of Quibi
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The 7 Essential Tools for Creative Leaders: A Full-Stack Toolkit
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The 30M Impression Campaign: How Storytelling and Earned Media Turned a Brand Activation into a Cultural Moment
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The "Unreliable Narrator": A Deeply Creative Trope You Should Be Using in Your Brand Marketing
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The "Second Brain" for a Full-Stack Creative: My System for Capturing, Connecting, and Creating Ideas
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The "GTM" is Your Third Act: Applying Narrative Structure to Your Go-to-Market Plan
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The "Creative Capital" Framework: How to Allocate Your Time and Energy Like a Venture Capitalist
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
The "Chief Narrative Officer": Why This Will Be the Most Important C-Suite Role in the Next Decade
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Scaling Creative Operations at Yelp: The Systems That Made It Possible
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Narrative Marketing vs. Performance Marketing: Why Story-Driven Campaigns Win
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Moonbeam: 0 to Acquisition — Building a TikTok-Style Podcast App from Beta to Exit
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Leader's Guide to Managing Freelancers and Creative Agencies
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
How to Lead a High-Performing Remote Creative Team
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Avenues: The World School - Building a Global Brand System Across Two International Campuses
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
How to Build a Brand Voice from Scratch: A Startup Case Study
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
How to Apply Product Thinking to Your Creative Process
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
How We Used User Journey Design to Boost a Creator Platform’s Retention by 30%
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
How We Used Narrative to Increase Audience Reach by 40%: An IAC Case Study
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
How We Drove 30 Million Impressions for Yelp’s National “Servies” Campaign
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
How We Built a Creative Operating System to Increase Campaign Efficiency by 25% at Yelp
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
How We Aligned Creative and Product to Build a Better Content Pipeline at Yelp
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
First Principles Thinking for Creatives: How to Deconstruct Any Story or Brand Problem to its Core
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Deconstructing Haiku: How the 5-7-5 Structure Can Revolutionize Your UX Microcopy
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
Creative Strategy Isn't Just for Agencies—It's a Core Business Function
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
An Agile Creativity Framework: How to Run Your Creative Team Like a Product Squad
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
AI as a "Creative Co-Pilot": A Practical Guide for Agencies and Studios
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
A Leader's Guide to Managing Freelancers and Creative Agencies
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
GTM Strategy Case Study: How We Launched a Startup MVP
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
5 Enduring Lessons from a Decade of Leading Brand Campaigns
BALANCE IN
MOTION FOR
A BETTER LIFE
World-Building-as-a-Service: The Next Big Agency Model
POINT OF VIEW

The Set Up
It’s the question that keeps every founder and product manager up at night: how do you get people to stay? You can build a beautiful product, attract thousands of users, and have a brilliant mission, but if your platform is a leaky bucket, none of it matters. This was the precise challenge facing Moonbeam, an innovative, early-stage platform designed to help creators find and collaborate with one another.
When I joined as Curation Director, Moonbeam had a passionate user base and a fantastic core product. But our user retention numbers were flat. Users would sign up, get excited, and then… drift away. They were struggling to find the right collaborators, missing key platform updates, and weren't experiencing the "magic moment" of a successful connection quickly enough.
The problem wasn't the product's value; it was the product's narrative. The user journey was a series of disconnected events, not a cohesive, compelling story.
Over six months, I led a cross-functional initiative to redesign the user journey from the ground up, not as a series of features, but as a deliberate narrative. We partnered with the product and UX teams to create new feedback systems, content loops, and communication touchpoints. The result was a 30% increase in user retention and a significant lift in user engagement—all without a single major change to the core product. This is the story of how we stopped fixing features and started fixing the story.
Our user journey was a monologue, not a dialogue. We were talking at our users, not building a relationship with them.
The Journey
From Disconnected Clicks to a Cohesive Narrative
Phase 1
Our first step was to move beyond simple analytics and build a qualitative, empathetic understanding of the user experience. We weren't just losing users; we were losing people with hopes and creative dreams. Why?
Diagnosis & The User Journey Map
Users felt:
- Overwhelmed: They were presented with too many potential collaborators at once, leading to choice paralysis.
- Invisible: They didn't know if their own profile was being seen or if their outreach was landing.
- Disconnected: They were missing key platform updates and opportunities because our communication was sporadic.
Using this insight, we created a detailed User Journey Map. This became our foundational document. We mapped every single touchpoint a user had with Moonbeam in their first 14 days, from the initial sign-up email to their first collaboration request. For each touchpoint, we identified the user's action, their emotional state (e.g., excited, confused, frustrated), and the "narrative gap"—the place where the story we wanted to tell them diverged from the story they were actually experiencing.
This map revealed our core problem: our user journey was a monologue, not a dialogue. We were talking at our users, not building a relationship with them.
Phase 2
Designing the Narrative Loops
With our journey map as our blueprint, I proposed a new strategy centered around creating three interconnected narrative loops: a Feedback Loop, a Content Loop, and a Community Loop.
1. The Feedback Loop (Making the User Feel Seen)
The biggest source of user frustration was a lack of feedback. They felt like they were shouting into a void. To solve this, we designed and implemented a new, automated system of notifications and prompts.
- Old Way: A user sends a collaboration request and hears nothing.
- New Way:
  - Instantly, they receive a confirmation: "Your request has been sent! We'll let you know when [User's Name] has seen it."
  - When their profile is viewed, they get a notification: "Good news! A creator just viewed your profile."
  - We designed a "nudge" system. If a request went unanswered for 72 hours, the recipient would get a gentle, automated reminder.
    This simple system transformed the user experience from one of anxiety to one of informed anticipation. It was the first chapter in our new story: "We see you, and we're here with you."
2. The Content Loop (Making the Platform Feel Alive)
Our next challenge was to make the platform feel dynamic and constantly valuable, even if a user wasn't actively collaborating. I led the development of a new, curation-driven content strategy.
- "Creator of the Week": We began featuring an outstanding creator on the homepage and in a new weekly newsletter. This created a powerful incentive for users to polish their profiles and celebrated the talent within our community.
- Targeted "Opportunity" Emails: Instead of generic platform updates, we used platform data to send highly targeted emails. A screenwriter would get an alert about a director looking for a sci-fi script; a composer would get an alert about a filmmaker needing a score. This transformed our emails from "spam" into an essential, valuable service.
3. The Community Loop (Making Users Feel Connected)
Finally, we needed to connect our users to each other outside of formal projects. We supported strategic pivots and growth marketing experiments to foster a sense of belonging. We defined product positioning and user journeys that encouraged users to join our new community forums and participate in weekly "collaboration prompt" challenges. This created a space for users to build relationships and feel like part of a movement, even before they landed their first big project.
The Results:
A 30% Lift in Retention and a More Engaged Community
By redesigning the user journey as a cohesive narrative, we fundamentally changed the user's relationship with the platform. They went from feeling like isolated users of a tool to feeling like valued members of a community. The quantitative results were a direct reflection of this qualitative shift.
The Metrics that Mattered
Over the two quarters following the implementation of our new journey design, we tracked a clear and sustained impact on our core business metrics:
- 14-Day User Retention Increased by 30%: This was our North Star metric. By creating a more engaging, informative, and rewarding first two weeks, we dramatically reduced the number of users who signed up and churned. The "leaky bucket" was patched because users were now experiencing the platform's "magic moment" faster and more reliably.
- Key Action Engagement Grew by 25%: We saw a significant increase in the number of "key actions" taken per user session. This included sending collaboration requests, updating profiles, and engaging with our new content features. Users weren't just staying longer; they were doing more.
- Newsletter Open Rates Climbed to Over 60%: Our shift from generic platform updates to curated, high-value content turned our newsletter into a must-read. It became a primary driver of weekly re-engagement, bringing users back to the platform consistently.
The Human-Centric Result
Beyond the numbers, the biggest change was in the vibe of the community. The feedback we received shifted from "I'm confused" or "Is this thing on?" to "I was so excited to get a notification that a director viewed my profile!" and "Thank you for featuring my work in the newsletter!" We had successfully transformed the experience from one of passive waiting to one of active participation and hope. We proved that a well-designed narrative isn't just a "nice-to-have"; it's a core driver of the metrics that every product and business leader cares about most.
Lessons Learned
Three Truths About User Journey Design
This project reinforced three core principles that I now carry into every brand, product, and strategic challenge
1. Retention is a Function of Narrative, Not Just Features
We often think that adding one more feature will be the key to making users stay. This project proved that the story you tell a user—the way you guide them, give them feedback, and make them feel seen—is often more powerful than any single tool. A cohesive journey can make a simple feature set feel indispensable.
2. The "Empty Room" is Your Biggest Enemy
A new user arriving on a platform that feels quiet or static is a death sentence. Our content and feedback loops were designed to solve this "empty room" problem. By constantly showing the user that the platform was alive with activity, opportunities, and success stories, we gave them a reason to believe and a reason to stick around.
3. Your Most Powerful Insights Live at the Seams
This project's success was entirely dependent on the tight collaboration between Creative, Product, and UX. The best ideas weren't born in a single department; they were discovered at the seams between them. My role as the "translator"—the person who could speak the language of user empathy, narrative design, and business goals—was the key to unlocking the solution. The most valuable leaders are the ones who can live in that intersection.
This experience at Moonbeam was foundational. It cemented my belief that a full-stack creative approach—one that blends storytelling, user-centric design, and operational rigor—isn't just a better way to make content; it's a better way to build businesses.