Monetizing Wave on mobile: building a unified system across features and platforms

UX/UI Design

Role

Product (UX/UI) Design

Team

Myself (senior mobile product designer);
1 web design systems designer;
Mobile PM;
Mobile engineers;
Payments team (PM, web designer, engineers);
Accounting team (PM, web designer, engineers);
Content lead;
Compliance team

Year

2023

Overview

Before this project, Wave’s mobile and web apps were entirely free, serving a broad user base without monetization. Then, a sudden, company-wide shift required us to start generating revenue — and fast.

As the mobile designer, I led the charge to integrate monetization into our mobile app design.

The challenge: coordinating lots of moving parts

This project was challenging due to its large scope and significant impact on the company. It was also unexpected, with tight deadlines, and required us to effectively coordinate across multiple moving parts in an evolving context, all without a designated project lead.

Since our monetization system spanned across features and platforms, I collaborated closely with PMs, engineers, and fellow designers from different feature teams.

Design objectives

Discussing the monetization project with the design team, we wanted our designs to be:

• Clear and informative — the monetization components should be part of the same language and easily recognizable; users should immediately tell which features are part of a paid subscription.

• Integrated and unobtrusive — in the past, we’ve discovered that users experienced banner blindness for dashboard promo tiles that were too flashy. We wanted to prevent banner blindness, so the elements should feel like part of the app. (As a design team, we agreed that the components should feel like a helpful assistant, rather than an aggressive salesman.) These elements also needed to be non-intrusive for free users.

• Make users curious — since we wanted users to sign up for a pricing plan, the designs should compel users to learn more about the plans.

The balance was crucial — we wanted to our monetization designs to be compelling, but never at the cost of a smooth, user-friendly experience even for the free user.

Process and collaboration

The process was undoubtedly iterative, reflecting the evolving nature of the project. I worked alongside our web design systems designer to create a monetization design language that fit with our Wave ecosystem.

Within each specific feature, I partnered with the product manager and web designer to identify key touchpoints where upgrade triggers would be most effective, throughout the mobile and web apps. These touchpoints were carefully designed to drive user engagement and conversion. The insights from these specific designs fed back into the overall design language, creating a cohesive and scalable system.

In the end, I designed a scalable and cohesive mobile design language and monetization system that was implemented across multiple touchpoints, making sure they harmonized with the web experience and aligned with our broader product ecosystem.

Results and impact

The mobile monetization framework design not only met our immediate business goals by providing a consistent revenue stream for Wave, but also provided the versatility to expand with other future paywall touchpoints.

The designs clearly differentiated between free and premium features while strategically guiding users to explore the value of our pricing plans. This project marked a transformative shift in Wave’s approach to monetization.

This is a tiny sample of my work. If you’d like to learn more, please reach out directly.