Motion Array
Making a platform loved by content creators worldwide.
Services
Design strategy
User research
Market research
Data analysis
Interaction design
Interface design
Design system
Deliverables
Design roadmap
Product spec
Product tracking plan
4 products brought to market
Team involved
Rebecca Visser
Content Director
Cole Vineyard
VP of Marketing
Albert Cloete
Engineer
Louise Lista
Engineer
Lemuel Flores
Engineer
Introduction
In 2018, I joined Motion Array, a platform for content creators that had gained popularity with its innovative unlimited downloads subscription model, which was a game changer for professional video creators at the time.
Despite this initial success and rapid growth, the company experienced a slowdown in 2018. I was brought in to analyze the challenges and create strategies to get the company back on track.
My role was to assess the platform’s offerings, user experience, and market position, and develop a plan to drive growth.
Uncovering the challenges
I went on discovery process to understand the challenges the platform faced. I began by deeply analyzing the product, business model, and internal operations. I reviewed all available data from the website and platform, and conducted interviews with both contributors who created the assets and customers who subscribed to the service.
What I uncovered was a series of interconnected issues. While Motion Array had initially developed thousands of assets, growth plateaued, and the assets themselves were limited to a few niche categories. This narrowed the platform's appeal, as new customers didn’t find enough variety, and existing subscribers didn’t see the value in keeping their subscription when new assets were not released quickly enough. The result was rapid customer churn, with many users only subscribing temporarily when they needed assets.
Furthermore, users struggled to find relevant assets due to limited search and discovery functionalities, making the already limited selection seem even smaller. This friction disrupted their creative flow, reducing the platform’s perceived value.
Key insights and opportunities
In addition to identifying these challenges, we also discovered additional opportunities for growth and user retention. We realized that offering educational content and fostering a community could help users maximize the value of the platform and the subscription.
Moreover, we've heard that our members are struggling with sharing their work and gathering feedback, as well as creating and sharing their portfolios. And most importantly the available tools for getting assets were detached from their workflow, making them break focus and leaving their workspaces when looking for the creative.
We realized the potential for developing new products that would help our members by integrating seamlessly into their workflow unlocking productivity and helping them work faster.
Designing the solution
The strategy had two main goals — to fix the platform’s current problems and to add more value for our customers.
First, we'd fix the issues regarding search, filtering and the platform offering, to provide more value as soon as possible. Next, develop new tools that would help our members with the secondary issues they have with their workflow.
Search and discovery enhancements
We prioritized rethinking search and discovery to make browsing and finding assets easier.
We started by rethinking the filtering to help members narrow down the results efficiently to find specific assets.
Then, using elastic search, we improved the search capabilities and developed personalized recommendations through content-based and collaborative filtering. This allowed the platform to consistently surface relevant results, addressing the issue of users spending excessive time searching for assets.
Marketplace extension
At the same time, we launched a product-driven marketing campaign aimed at expanding the number of assets in the marketplace. After conducting market and platform analysis to identify globally popular and in-demand items on the platform, we supplied this information to our contributors through their creator dashboard.
This helped them understand what assets are missing and what has the best earning potential for them. The new earning potential and increased visibility motivated our creators and sparked a big boost in asset creation.
Expanding into new categories also solved the challenge of niche content, attracting a broader audience. And with new content, we also introduced categories with curated assets, recommended authors and hand picked assets based on the users preferences, which further boosted discovery and enhanced search ability.
As part of our expansion, we also showcased the number of assets downloaded relative to the new products added each week. This allows users to gauge how effectively they're leveraging their subscription and ensures they can see whether they're maximizing the platform's growing offerings.
Driving organic growth
We launched a community-driven educational platform called “The Learn” where creators could boost their skills with tutorials, tips, and insights into industry tools and trends.
We organized the content into categories and levels of expertise, making it easy for users to find material suited to their current skill level and learning goals.
We partnered with industry experts and influencers to generate high-quality, relevant content focused on practical, hands-on tutorials and in-depth insights that users could directly apply to their work.
The Learn quickly grew into an organic traffic engine with over 2M monthly active users, significantly driving engagement and growth for Motion Array. This project not only fulfilled the demand for educational content but also established Motion Array as a valuable resource for personal and professional development in the video production industry.
Streamlining user workflow
To further enhance the value of the subscription, and help creators streamline their workflow, we developed several new products that extended beyond just offering assets. We introduced a video collaboration tool, enabling users to quickly gather feedback from teams or clients. We also created Adobe Suite plug-ins, allowing users to find and integrate assets directly from their favorite design tools.
To support creators in showcasing their work, we developed a website portfolio builder, closing the loop from asset creation to publication.
All these products created a seamless experience that allowed users to find, use, collaborate on, and publish assets efficiently. This full workflow—from discovery to publication—not only enhanced the user experience but also encouraged long-term engagement with the platform.
Outcome
The initiatives we brought to life helped us achieve a 185% growth year over year and the marketplace grew to 600k products and over 9m active users.
Our new learning platform grew to over 2m monthly active users, marking a 200% increase in organic traffic year over year, a 50% increase in our membership base, increased time spent on the platform, and high engagement metrics.
And with the new products like learn, portfolio builder and the video collaboration tool we introduced, the subscription offered a significantly better long term value extending subscription length on average by 16x and drastically reducing churn.
During my second year at Motion Array, we've achieved and exceeded the goals we set and the company was acquired by Artlist for $65M
