I spent a year and a half working at Medium as a product design lead and manager. Beginning in 2016, my projects were focused on creator tools, including improvements to the editor UI and projects to encourage writers to come back and publish regularly.
Medium Membership
In 2017, I was the lead designer for launching Medium Memberships, developing the user flows for our paid memberships. We created a paywall on stories, where a reader can subscribe to become a member.
As a premium member-only feature, and as a way to attract high-profile authors to write multiple stories behind the member paywall, I designed a new type of story collection. These collections are a useful way to package stories as columns and article series: authors can go more in depth or explore more niche topics in their writing, and readers can have a better understanding of what to expect as new stories are published.
Medium Partner Program
In August of 2017, we launched the Medium Partner Program. Writers who sign up to be part of the program connect their bank accounts and agree to the terms. When they write stories and add them to the member paywall, they receive payment based on how members engage with their stories. I was responsible for designing the user flows for signing up, locking stories, and learning about estimated and past payments.