Envato - Improving search

In the last year I've lead design across search & content. I've helped to refine a roadmap for our core product across five teams, improve our design craft and release features that elevate our core product value of finding assets quickly.
Lead Product Designer 
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2024 - Now
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Leading design in Search & Content ('24 - Present)

I've been the lead designer in the search and content domain for the last year and a half. This is an individual contributor role, pairing with our two other senior designers to ensure quality and consistency. While also working with product and engineering leads to contribute to our future roadmap, validating ideas and create direction for the teams.
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Results:
Released a series of features that users love, like: Search by audio, easy content ID clearance, easier preview of music tracks. Supported with: updating to semantic search, introducing new content types, improved download options, additional similarity search tools.
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Collectively resulting in increased search success across categories, our primary success metric.
Continued growth in subscriptions, with search being a primary entry point for new users.

A rough video showcasing future plans. The result of internal workshops, customer validation. Enabled by the foundational work we've completed in the last year such as moving to vector based search.
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A few highlights

Some of the features I've designed and launched recently.
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Visual search - droppping soon
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Claim Clear - Enables users to quickly clear YouTube videos of copyright claims. One of the biggest pain-points for our core user group, videographers.
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Sounds Like search - find stock music that sounds like a commercial song with a YouTube or Spotify link
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Rebrand project (2024)

Subscriptions had plateaued, with dated visual design and increasing customer feedback highlighting poor and even “underhanded” design. This undermined trust and indicated a deeper issue with both brand perception and usability. I was the first product designer, helping to set initial direction and foundations like typography & token approach, before moving onto leading the design and rollout across search and results in particular.
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Actions:
Collaborative Rebranding: Partnered with the marketing team to redefine the brand identity.
‍Design System Overhaul: Introduced a comprehensive new design system.
‍Accessibility Improvements: Fixed major accessibility issues to ensure inclusivity and compliance.
‍Debt Reduction: Addressed both design and technical debt to improve maintainability.
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Results:
Rebrand was a success: All key subscription and churn metrics improved post-release. Additional organic traffic was generated, thanks to buzz and community excitement around the refreshed brand.
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Preview of foundational components

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Active subscribers following launch. Spikes are sales events.

Other wins
Project
RESULTS
How people search
Literature review, desktop research and user interviews. Breaking down the complex user behaviour within search in a digestible way.
Changed strategy on search, projects and personalisation domains. For example: A project to introduce more variety for some search terms, resulting in increased search success; motivated style browser concept seen in above video - currently being built but tested well.
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