Twitter VIT App — Marvin Williams

Context

Over time, publishers expressed problems with using Twitter to interact with their audiences and building their businesses.

Through internal data, we discovered that there was a ↓47% year-over-year decrease in publisher-fan engagement on Twitter. Publishers cited the subpar tools available on Twitter as the reason and wanted more ways to interact with fans, without the clutter.

I worked with another designer on the initial creation of the VIT app. This app saw tremendous growth over the first couple years with nearly all of Twitter's partners adopting the app.

before

after

Creating the MVP 🏆

As a team, we decided to start with three features for the MVP:

Q&A: The ability to create and manage a Q&A on Twitter - Publishers were already doing this impromptu, and we wanted to give them an official tool.

Hype: The ability to use a Twitter Website Card to bring awareness to an event or cause.

Camera: Adding new features to the core Twitter Camera such as a freeform canvas, more filters, and stickers + emojis.

The Work

Creationstreamlined flow to setup a Q&A on one screen

ConfirmationUsers can respond to questions in multiple ways

Management Screenhub for users to view questions from fans with the ability to respond

ReplyUsers can answer questions using a built-in camera function

CreationCreation was simple and was structured similar to other features.

PreviewEach Hype Tweet had a specialized rich link and prominent CTA button.

ConfirmationAfter setting up their Hype, users were then able to take a quick action.

CreationPolls had the ability to have attachments and up to 4 choices.

Poll LengthModule for setting a poll length.

MediaAttach images and videos like a normal Tweet.

The ability to create and manage a Q&A on Twitter - Publishers were already doing this impromptu, and we wanted to give them an official tool. My approach to this experience was to make it feel like you’re Tweeting - with extra controls. For the MVP, I went with an approach that parsed out each step with a clear description.

Publishers used Twitter to promote different causes throughout the year and also collected donations. A number of them expressed that the ability to natively bring awareness to these causes for donations would greatly improve this experience.

Unique to this app, I brought the ability to create polls on Twitter for the first time, exclusively for VIT app users. This eventually became a Twitter feature for all users.

Publishers wanted better features out of Twitter Camera, and the VIT App allowed us to experiment - we used the Twitter camera as a base and enabled additional features, such as freeform drawing and new filters.

Q&A

The ability to host Q&As was the number-one request from publishers.

This feature was not available in the core app and would significantly increase engagement among fans and publishers.

Publishers were already using Twitter to host their own impromptu Q&A’s with fans. This method was not sustainable as they would have to sort through thousands of Tweets manually.

Hype

Publishers used Twitter to promote different causes throughout the year and also collected donations.

A number of them expressed that the ability to natively bring awareness to these causes for donations would greatly improve this experience.

Poll

Short blurb about this screen: what the person sees here and the design decision behind it.

Camera

Short blurb about this screen: what the person sees here and the design decision behind it.