Leading Content Discovery & Search
Senior Product designer (Team lead)
Charter: Discovery | Pods: Browse, Search
with Sharad Singh (Senior Product Designer) Somanshu (Associate Product Designer) Charvi Mathur (Associate Product Designer) Hari Krishan (Associate Product Designer) Kunal Verma (Intern Design Team)
Client:
Zee Entertainment
Year:
2022
The Challenge
During the transition from Acquisition to Discovery, I spoke with the existing stakeholders to understand the challenges:
Planning was weak. Most features were introduced mid-quarter, driven by product and business, leaving little room for structured thinking.
With a sole designer, bandwidth was constrained, limiting the scope and speed of execution, with only 1–2 feature launches per quarter.
Design had limited influence on prioritization. Insights were rarely acted upon. The experience lagged behind competitors, and design-led initiatives were minimal.
A failed experiment, rolled back within 24 hours, created lasting bias and caution around future experimentation.
Impact
Built a prioritisation tool that improved team productivity and scaled across charters
Mentored 4 designers
Championed the use of research in product decisions
Executed over 23 design initatives in two quarters
Won 2nd place in an internal hackathon
Increased search CTR from 79% to 81%
Team launched an experiment that improved VTUR by 13% in a control group
Launched Ai powered search
Design Operations
The new team allowed us to approach the charter with fresh eyes. While we had more bandwidth, most were fresh graduates who needed training. I chose to onboard them early, before assigning charter work.
Instead of a standard audit, I structured onboarding around hands-on learning:
Mapped key user journeys after a brief session on journey mapping to build system understanding
Recreated the homepage pixel-perfect using the design system to learn Figma and core components
Identified a problem area and designed a solution within a week, with reviews every two days including data, research, and design
The final work was presented to the broader design team. This built ownership and gave them visibility within a team of 50+ designers.
Step 1: Userjourneys mapped
Team presentation
Planning and Prioratisation
As we integrated with the larger team, I pushed for clarity on the quarterly plan. The plan arrived late, but I used this phase to understand the charter and its workflows.
I requested a detailed walkthrough to align on priorities. I then introduced a simple planning format that:
Defined clear priorities
Mapped designers to projects
Made bandwidth visible
This improved accountability and transparency across teams.
When clarity on priorities or success metrics was missing, I escalated to standardise the process.
Outcome:
Clear visibility into BAU work and timelines, enabling the team to plan design initiatives and manage time off without impacting delivery.
Quarterly planning breakdown
Quarterly planning sample
Research and Design
Design had low influence in discussions, often reduced to opinion. I shifted the team to research-backed decision making.
The team had strong research, but it was underused. Reports were hard to consume, and insights were often misquoted.
I partnered with the research team to run walkthrough sessions over two weeks, helping designers absorb key insights at once.
Kunal and I then redesigned the research outputs:
Simplified reports with clear structure and visuals
Made insights modular and reusable in presentations
Outcome:
Designers could easily reference accurate insights, strengthening their voice in reviews and decisions.
Free watchers research docket
Subscribed user research docket
Design intiatives
With increased bandwidth and clear timelines, we moved beyond BAU to proactively design across the user journey.
The team delivered 23 design initiatives.
Not all were built, but the rigor of presenting them earned design a seat at the table. These concepts shaped product thinking and influenced future releases.
One key initiative I led in this time was AI-powered search.
Click here to view the case study
Touch-points we were able to design while working in the discovery charter