Driving engagement and real-world action through product design

WaterBear is a free global sustainability streaming platform designed to educate, inspire, and mobilize audiences around environmental and social issues. Unlike traditional media platforms, WaterBear’s success is measured not only by viewership, but by real-world action.

I joined as a Senior Product Designer to help evolve the product experience across onboarding, engagement, and impact mechanics, working closely with product, engineering, content, and impact teams.

Overview

  • Users did not fully understand the platform’s value

  • Engagement often ended at passive viewing

  • Impact mechanics were complex behind the scenes

The Problem

The core question became:

How do we turn passive viewing into sustained engagement and meaningful action—without adding friction or complexity?

Product Strategy & Design Approach

Rather than treating this as a purely visual redesign, I approached the problem as a behavioral and systems challenge.

1.

Early exploration showed that users needed to quickly understand:

  • What makes WaterBear different from other streaming platforms

  • Why their time on the platform matters

I focused on onboarding flows that prioritized clarity over novelty, introducing WaterBear’s mission and mechanics in simple, human language rather than abstract impact metrics.

Clarify value proposition early

2.

A key shift was reframing the experience from watching content to participating in change.

This meant designing UX patterns that:

  • Reinforced progress and contribution

  • Made impact feel tangible and immediate

  • Encouraged repeat engagement without pressure or guilt

Design for behavior, not consumption

3.

WaterBear’s impact model involves partnerships, donations, and measurable outcomes — all of which can feel abstract to users.

My role was to:

  • Translate complex backend mechanics into intuitive front-end experiences

  • Reduce cognitive load while maintaining transparency

  • Design interactions that felt empowering, not transactional

This required close collaboration with non-design stakeholders to ensure accuracy without sacrificing usability.

Simplify complex impact mechanics

Key Design Contributions

  • Designed onboarding flows that clearly communicated platform purpose and value

  • Reduced friction by sequencing information instead of presenting it all upfront

  • Balanced inspiration with usability to avoid overwhelming new users

Onboarding & Activation

Engagement & Feedback Loops

  • Designed and refined engagement mechanics that reward meaningful participation

  • Developed the UX architecture behind “Watch for Impact” style interactions

  • Focused on reinforcing positive feedback loops without gamifying the mission

  • Improved consistency across platform touchpoints to strengthen trust and clarity

  • Ensured UX decisions aligned with both brand values and product goals

  • Advocated for scalable patterns that could evolve with future features

Platform UX & Consistency

  • Clearer onboarding and stronger value comprehension

  • Improved alignment between content and action

  • More cohesive engagement experience

  • Strengthened platform foundation for future growth

Outcomes & Impact

Reflection

Designing for impact at scale requires restraint. This work reinforced the importance of sequencing complexity, designing systems over screens, and grounding engagement mechanics in clarity rather than novelty. As WaterBear continues to evolve, the next opportunity lies in deepening personalization and measuring long-term behavior change. More than anything, this project reflects how I approach product design: framing ambiguous problems clearly and building scalable foundations that support meaningful growth.