Blinkist's B2B Platform
Enable L&D Managers to create collections their employees love
Team
1 Product Manager
1 Fullstack Engineer
and me (Product Designer)
My responsibilities
user research
information architecture
prototyping
interface + experience
testing
iterations
Timeline
3 months, 2024
Problem
Learning & Development Managers don't have an intuitive and informative platform that helps them facilitate the learning material they want to provide to their employees.
Hypothesis: IF L&D Managers would have that, they'd be more likely to choose Blinkist over another learning material provider.
HOW MIGHT WE create an intuitive and informative platform for L&D Managers with a focus on creating collections & engagement levers?
I tackled this project in a tiny team of 3. Me and my Project Manager interviewed several L&D Managers about their hardships, what they hope they'd get out of Blinkist and how we can ease their work.
A glimpse into the research:
From a doc written in Confluence by my PM in 2022
Metrics
We focused on product-led growth for B2B and prioritised L&D Manager enablement. We didn't have data support because we were an independent unit. Therefore we focused on what we could do at that point: Qualitative feedback and B2B plan sales.
Solution
I created a desktop-first solution that enabled L&D Managers to quickly generate a collection of different Blinks (= 15min book summaries in audio form). These were easy to publish, pause, plan ahead, or delete. They were directly brodcasted to the Blinkist web platform and mobile app, so learners (= employees) could enjoy them.
Next to the admin platform focus I also integrated and updated a lot of features on the web platform, in collaboration with my tiny team. Before we integrated them they were only available on the mobile app or existed in a quite outdated web version.
In a matter of 3 months we updated the main tabs (For You, Explore, My Library and Spaces). We also added Guides, re-did the reader + player, and updated the Search. It was a lot in a short amount of time because we were autonymous and quick in our feedback loops and decisions.
Iterations
We created a vision for the admin platform and showed that to our L&D manager panel.
We then went into discussions about what could be improved.
After that we coded the improved version and showed it to L&D Managers again
From time to time this resulted in further iterations which we could quickly tackle
Outcome
L&D Managers were way happier with what they could create within the Blinkist Library.
This enabled us as a company to position Blinkist as a go-to B2B product. Traditionally Blinkist used to be a pure B2C company.