Lomotif
Improving video creation rate
Overview
Lomotif is a leading social video editing app with a massive global user base. As a Senior Product Designer, I led key UI/UX improvements to enhance user engagement, streamline the editing experience, and drive retention.
The Challenge
📌 Complex Editing Experience – Users found the editing interface unintuitive, leading to incomplete video creations.
📌 User Retention Issues – High drop-off rates in onboarding and engagement challenges post-signup.
My Role & Design Process
As the Senior Product Designer, I collaborated with product managers, engineers, and UX researchers to overhaul the editing experience and address key pain points. My approach followed a structured Design Thinking framework:
1️⃣ Research & Discovery
To ensure design decisions were data-driven, I conducted:
• 📊 UX Audits: Analyzed the current app’s UI complexity, navigation bottlenecks, and usability gaps.
• 🗣️ User Research: Interviewed new and active users to uncover frustrations and unmet needs.
• 🔍 Competitive Benchmarking: Studied TikTok and Instagram to identify best practices.
• 📈 Behavior Analytics: Used data insights to pinpoint where users abandoned the editing process.
2️⃣ Ideation & Prototyping
With a deep understanding of the pain points, I worked on:
• ✏️ Wireframing & User Flows: Crafted simplified editing workflows that reduced cognitive load.
• 🎨 UI & Interaction Design: Designed a cleaner, more intuitive editing interface using Figma.
• 🔄 Interactive Prototypes: Created clickable prototypes to simulate new interactions before development.
3️⃣ User Testing & Validation
• ✅ Conducted A/B testing to measure engagement before & after UI changes.
• 🎥 Live Usability Tests to validate whether new users could complete a video without confusion.
• 🔄 Iterated based on user feedback to refine micro-interactions and transitions.
1️⃣ Research & Discovery
Understanding the whys
Before exploring solutions, it was crucial to identify the root causes of the issue. Our data scientist analyzed user drop-off points and pinpointed the screens where users spent the most time, helping us uncover key usability challenges.
To gain deeper insights, we collaborated with a UX researcher and conducted a remote workshop with key stakeholders. This session helped us identify areas for improvement and establish a clear direction for enhancing the video editor. Due to remote working and our globally distributed team, we facilitated the workshop via FigJam, ensuring seamless collaboration despite geographical constraints.
A major usability issue we observed during testing is that after selecting an editing tool, such as “Edit Music,” users assume that their changes are automatically applied, since other tools remain visible on the same screen. The “Done” button, which is meant to confirm their selection, is often overlooked due to its placement in the upper header, making it less intuitive.
Let me show this further:
As shown above , the 'save' button was not sufficiently prominent since, when the user focused on the music section, other tools stayed visible; put yourself in the user's position, having completed your edits and wishing to add text. Instinctively, you would tap “Add Text” right away, but then this happens:
Imagine this occurring with every editing choice made by users; dissatisfaction leads to a substantial dropout rate. It's clear that we need to improve this procedure. Below is a video recording showcasing the entire process.
Competitor research
As short video platforms such as TikTok and Instagram gain popularity, I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. So, I conducted research on competing or similar video editing apps to identify current trends.
Tik Tok
TikTok is one of the most recognized short video platforms. Upon closer analysis, I observed that its video editor opens directly to the camera, encouraging users to start recording immediately. Once recording is complete, the app seamlessly transitions to the editing interface, where most tools are conveniently positioned within the lower navigation panel. This layout enhances tool accessibility, ensures easy differentiation, and maintains a clutter-free interface, allowing for a more intuitive editing experience.
Strengths & Weaknesses of TikTok’s Recording & Editing Flow
Instagram follows a similar approach, guiding users directly into video recording before transitioning to the editing phase. The Instagram video editor should prioritize accessibility, allowing users to effortlessly navigate and explore available tools. Its interface must feature intuitive controls for essential functions such as trimming, applying filters, adding music and text, and organizing clips, ensuring a seamless editing experience.
Strengths & Weaknesses of Instagram’s Recording & Editing Flow
✅ Strengths:
1. Advanced Clip Management – Offers better clip organization, allowing users to reorder and adjust video segments before finalizing.
2. Polished Aesthetic Tools – Filters, effects, and music integration emphasize Instagram’s visual and aesthetic appeal, catering to a different content style than TikTok.
❌ Weaknesses:
1. Editing Tools Can Be Harder to Discover – TikTok places all major editing tools clearly in the lower navigation, whereas Instagram’s tools are sometimes nested in menus, requiring extra taps.
2. Limited Real-Time Effects & Interactivity – TikTok excels in live filters, effects, and transitions during recording, whereas Instagram’s are more post-processing-based.
3. Stronger Focus on Stories & Reels Instead of Pure Editing – Instagram’s design encourages users to create short, polished clips for Reels or Stories, whereas TikTok is built around a continuous content creation loop that drives engagement.
Summarize
While TikTok and Instagram focus on a record-first, edit-later approach, Lomotif prioritizes editing and uploading pre-recorded videos, aligning with users’ expectations for sharing short clips. This distinction plays a crucial role in shaping the user experience.
Unlike TikTok and Instagram, where content creation starts with real-time recording, Lomotif caters to users who edit before publishing, making its workflow more flexible for refining existing footage.
That said, their clean and intuitive editing tool arrangement enhances usability, ensuring a seamless and user-friendly editing experience.
2️⃣ Ideation & Prototyping
Wireframing
Throughout the wireframing stage, we explored multiple flow variations, with each team member contributing insights and feedback. This collaborative approach allowed us to refine the structure, ensuring a seamless and intuitive user experience.
Solution
After extensive testing and design iterations, we selected the optimized variant shown below. Our goal was to create a focused and distraction-free editing experience by guiding users to complete one task at a time.
Key Improvements:
✅ Task-Focused Workflow – Users can now fully engage with a single editing tool at a time, reducing cognitive load.
✅ Eliminating Accidental Actions – Prevents users from unintentionally interacting with other features while editing.
✅ Improved Navigation Clarity – A more intuitive layout ensures users can efficiently complete their edits before moving to the next step.
This approach improves workflow efficiency and makes the editing process seamless and user-friendly.
To enhance usability and visual clarity, I repositioned the tool icons to the bottom, providing users with a clearer overview of available tools. This adjustment also maximizes screen space for the video preview, aligning with user preferences for a more immersive editing experience.
Additionally, I changed the header color to black, creating a strong visual indicator that users have switched from the main editor screen to a specific editing tool mode. This subtle yet effective change improves contextual awareness, reducing confusion when navigating between different editing stages.
To maintain workflow consistency, all call-to-action (CTA) elements remain positioned at the bottom, where users’ attention naturally gravitates. This placement enhances efficiency, reduces cognitive load, and ensures a seamless editing flow.
Rather than redesigning UI elements from scratch, I leveraged the existing design system, ensuring consistency with established buttons, icons, and interaction patterns. This approach not only preserved brand familiarity but also streamlined development, allowing for faster implementation without disrupting the user experience.
Prototype
To further validate the improvements, our UX researcher conducted quick usability testing via Zoom with at least 5 - 10 users from different countries, ensuring diverse perspectives. Each participant interacted with the prototype, exploring the new tool positioning and navigation flow. The results were overwhelmingly positive, with no reported usability issues, reinforcing that the redesign successfully addressed key friction points.
Interact with the prototype below to experience the improved user flow and design enhancements firsthand. This prototype allows you to explore the refined editing interface, tool positioning, and workflow adjustments that were implemented based on user feedback and usability testing.
3️⃣ User Testing & Validation
Deploy
A/B Testing Approach
Due to the short project timeline, we needed a fast and reliable way to measure the impact of our design changes. Instead of conducting long-term observational studies, we opted for a controlled A/B test—a widely used method for quickly validating UX improvements at scale.
In this test, 50% of users experienced the redesigned editor, while the remaining half continued using the existing version. This allowed us to directly compare engagement rates and feature adoption between both groups.
Old Editor:
21.8%
New Editor:
23.1%
Result:
+1.3% increase
Target:
+2% increase
Our target success metric was set at 2%, based on:
✅ Historical Data – Previous UX/UI improvements resulted in an average 1.5%-2.5% uplift in engagement.
✅ Business Impact –With 5 million active users, a 2% increase would result in an additional 100,000 engaged users, reinforcing long-term retention.
💡 Key Takeaways
Although we didn’t fully achieve the 2% goal, a 1.3% increase remains a statistically significant improvement at scale. Given our short testing window, this outcome validates the effectiveness of the new editor design and provides a strong foundation for future refinements.
🚀 Presenting Findings & Launch Decision
After analyzing the A/B testing results, me and the product manager presented the findings to the team and key stakeholders to gather additional feedback. The discussion helped align on the effectiveness of the improvements, and after weighing the data and qualitative insights, we collectively decided to proceed with a full rollout.
🚀 Next Steps
🔹 Further Refinements – Deep-dive into user behavior analytics to identify additional usability improvements.
🔹 Iterative Testing – Conduct follow-up A/B tests focusing on micro-interactions and tool discoverability.
🔹 Long-Term Monitoring – Track engagement trends over the next few months to measure sustained adoption.
✅ Final Decision:
The redesigned editor successfully improved user engagement, with a 1.3% increase, validating our approach to refining tool visibility, navigation clarity, and user flow. While we initially aimed for a 2% uplift, this result remains statistically significant, proving that even small UX improvements can drive meaningful impact at scale.
By leveraging A/B testing for rapid validation, we ensured a data-driven rollout, balancing efficiency and usability enhancements under a tight project timeline. Presenting the findings to stakeholders and the team allowed us to align on the positive impact of the changes, leading to a confident full launch decision.
This project reinforced the power of user-centered design, where thoughtful UI refinements, iterative testing, and collaboration drive engagement and product growth. Moving forward, we remain committed to continuous optimization, ensuring the editing experience evolves alongside user needs.
🚀 This was just the beginning, by prioritizing iterative improvements we can continue shaping a seamless, intuitive, and engaging video editing experience.