This project focuses on optimizing Douyin’s text-posting feature. The design solution approaches improvement from two key stages: the creation process and content expression. By introducing modules such as AI-assisted writing, paginated editing, and template-based styling, the project aims to comprehensively enhance the publishing experience for creators and foster the continuous production of high-quality image-text content.
Information-Oriented Users
Their motivation for text posting is practical or task-driven—for example, offline merchants announcing promotional events, or individuals posting recruitment notices, reminders, and notifications.
In the user research phase, I invited four active image-text creators from platforms such as RedNote, Weibo, and Zhihu to participate in user interviews and usability testing. The goal was to gain deeper insights into their content creation habits and platform preferences.
Explored their motivations, workflows, and tool preferences in text-based content creation.
"My content is usually long. The editor’s functions are limited, and I’m always worried about losing everything I wrote when switching screens."
Insufficient Save Mechanism
My content is usually long. The editor’s functions are limited, and I’m always worried about losing everything I wrote when switching screens.
"I usually start with a rough framework of ideas, then use AI tools to organize the content, and finally refine it myself."
Adoption of AI Tools
Tools like ChatGPT are commonly used to generate introductions, summaries, or extract keywords for titles. However, current platforms lack integration with AI-assisted writing.
"After writing, I’m not sure what the published version will look like. I wish there were more templates and a preview function for formatting."
Demand for Image-Text Templates
Effective pairing of text with images, covers, or tags is considered crucial. Creators hope for standardized style templates and preview functionality.
Asked them to try existing text-posting features and observed the operational difficulties and expression limitations they encountered.
Summarizing the previous user research (interviews and usability testing), I identified three design goals.
Enhance focus and sense of security in text creation, reducing user churn
Lower creation barriers, increasing adoption of text-posting features
Enrich personalization options, boosting content engagement
Red Note
separates the “creation” and “beautification” steps, allowing users to focus on a single task and easing cognitive load.
