Impact is a comprehensive digital platform for the film and TV production industry, developed to modernize hiring, communication, and production management. With Notable partnerships with Netflix, HBO, and other Production companies, Impact first got their start as a "YC Combinator" writer development program to mentor unique under-represented voices in hollywood. What started as a project marketplace for the alumni, became what it is today. Impact is building a "Linkedin" for Hollywood, connecting hollywood creatives digitally. 

I served as the Lead Product Designer from the seed round through Series B funding.

The Problem

The Hollywood production ecosystem has been severely outdated, with hiring practices rooted in personal networks, disjointed communication methods, and no digital space for crew availability or project experience. Productions were reliant on phone calls, emails, and personal referrals. Hiring and coordination were fragmented, often involving multiple platforms.

Pain Points

Hiring

Limited to personal referrals, making it difficult to find candidates.

Organization

Teams struggled to consolidate information, using disparate tools.

Communication

Reliance on email and phone limited efficient collaboration.

Opportunity

How might we make hiring & communication within Hollywood more organized & efficient?

Project Goals

Consolation of Information

The industry lacked an integrated platform for showcasing crew past work and current availability.

Take Hiring Online

Instead of searching through personal networks to crew up productions, Impact should provide a easy way to find the right person.

Central Communication Hub For Productions

Provide a way to digitize crewlists, quickly communicate with one another, and send files.

Userflows & Storyboards

Phase 1: The Network (2022)

Currently, there is no dedicated platform for Hollywood professionals to network digitally. IMDB serves primarily as a read-only resource, while LinkedIn has limited popularity within the industry. To address this, we leveraged a database from Variety Insights to gather comprehensive project and crew information across Hollywood. We pre-filled profiles for crew members and introduced a “claim your profile” feature, allowing users to take ownership and save time by eliminating the need to manually update their credits. Additionally, we built features for connecting, messaging, and updating availability, streamlining the networking and communication process for industry professionals.

Claim Your Profile Page

We increased sign-up rates by 32% by addressing user confusion during onboarding.

My hypothesis was that users didn’t understand the value of signing up when landing on what appeared to be a profile page. To improve this, we scrapped the profile page. We decided to show just 5 credits imported from their profile as the identifer, added an intro to Impact as an company, and introduced additional opportunities to sign up through updating incorrect credits & connecting with people who you might know in the network.

Improving the Profile Card in Search Results

We enhanced the search card experience to better highlight relevant user data and improve functionality.

As our company grew, more functionality & profile data had to be tied to the profile card. We were quickly running out of real estate on desktop, losing functionality on mobile due to space constaints.

In v1, the cards displayed a profile picture, location, 2 credit tags, and three relevant credits, all of which were static information.

For v2, we introduced a ‘Profile Insights’ section to conditional surface information based on new filters. We also prioritized displaying relationships and organizations first, followed by the most recent credits. We also reduced the profile pictures size to save more additional space as we discovered that new users weren't uploading photo pictures as much. Additional updates include a full side profile that now slides into view, offering quick access to all action buttons, helping streamline the user workflow.

Phase 2: Avail Check (2022-2023)

Currently, the hiring process involves searching for individuals on IMDB or relying on personal networks, followed by sending individual emails to check availability for specific roles. This approach is repetitive and time-consuming, especially when contacting multiple candidates.

After establishing our network, we developed a set of filters to streamline this process for hiring managers. These filters allowed them to search based on criteria such as genre, project budget, specific roles, locations, union membership, past production experience, and collaborations with particular producers. Additionally, we built an availability management tool to track responses and monitor progress throughout the hiring process. This tool was integrated with our messaging system, facilitating seamless communication with candidates.

Improving The Avail Check Tool

The initial version felt static, lacked communication features and didn’t account for the various stages a candidate might be in. We also wanted to protect the privacy of the candidate & not show their personal information

In response, we introduced a status-tracking feature to reflect all the stages during hiring. We added a resend avail check feature, enabling hirers to nudge candidates for responses, along with a timestamp to provide better visibility into each candidate’s status and response timeline. Other improvements include updating the font sizing to account for older demographics, updating the profile picture thumbnail sizes to be consistent with our design library, and integrating our newly released messenger.

Phase 3: On-Set Tools (2023+)

In every production, a crew list is distributed containing everyone’s name, role, and contact information. When someone needs to reach out, they have to refer to this paper list or a PDF on their phone and manually copy the contact details to call. Now, with all crew members integrated into our network, their contact information is readily available. Production coordinators can easily search and enroll crew members through the network. Crew members can access the Impact app to view a digital crew list organized by department and role, enabling convenient messaging and calling directly from their mobile devices. 

Crew List Update

Based on feedback from crew members, we addressed frustrations with the old Crew List interface, including difficulty navigating between departments and excessive scrolling to reach the bottom of the list.

In the updated version, we reduced space between departments, adding an expandable/collapsible design to help improve navigating without frequent page switches, and removed the redundant profile pictures after its neutral response.

Establishing & Scaling The Design System

 While working on Impact, I spearheaded the creation of a scalable design system to address inconsistencies in the user interface and streamline collaboration across teams. Leveraging Figma, I built a comprehensive system that included reusable components, typography guidelines, and a cohesive color palette to ensure visual consistency. By collaborating closely with developers and product managers, we reduced implementation time and ensured the designs maintained a high level of polish across the platform.

Lessons Learned

 
Challenges Faced

Adapting the platform during the Hollywood writer strike required rapid adjustments to address a larger market, shifting from a writer-focused tool to a comprehensive crew solution.

Takeaways

Flexibility in product design and development is essential, especially in industries prone to sudden changes. How we won customers was fast bug fixes and customer requests, compared to our competitors who ignored any sort of requests

Next Steps

Integrating further AI-driven recommendations for hiring and enhancing collaboration tools for live production feedback.