My Dirty Hobby

Five years of feature design and a full-site redesign on a high-traffic consumer platform.

Aylo · UI/UX Designer, later Lead UI/UX Designer · 2019 to 2023 · Responsive web

Disclaimer: Due to non-disclosure agreements with Aylo, I am limited in the amount of work I can show.

Context and team

MDH is a large consumer platform built on content discovery, creator interaction and monetised engagement. I worked on it across my time at Aylo as the lead UX designer in a product team of a product owner, a business analyst, a graphic designer and the engineering team, with a junior UX designer working under me; first titled UI/UX Designer and from 2023 Lead UI/UX Designer, when design direction and review for the product formally became mine.

My remit

End-to-end feature design (flows, UI, supporting asset libraries) for notifications, favourites, creator profiles and virtual gifting, and a share of the full-site redesign. Involved from requirements gathering on each feature, shaping the soft requirements with the product owner and business analyst before design started. Ongoing behavioural analysis and A/B testing across the engagement surfaces I owned.

One decision: rebuilding the favourites feed around where the money was

Platform data showed users spent more on creators they had favourited than on anyone else, and the favourites page was a static list. I redesigned it mobile-first and content-first: live status and stories for favourited creators at the top, monetised actions (gift, react, save for later) on the card itself rather than a click away, and a proper onboarding state for users with no favourites yet so the page was never empty.

Result

The full-site redesign, which I lead and designed within the wider product team, drove a significant increase in engagement and membership +24% engagement and +19% retention.