Overview
Watching videos that actually pay you back.
Vibeo is a video streaming platform where watching isn’t a one-way street. Viewers earn real rewards for the time and attention they give, and creators get transparent tools to turn that same attention into income.
It is built around one simple belief: on most platforms, the audience creates all the value and sees none of it back. Vibeo tries to close that gap for both sides.
My role
I came in when Vibeo was still an idea on a slide, and took ownership of the whole journey from there.
I led design on this project, working with one designer under me, and carried a slide that said “a streaming platform where everyone wins” through to a validated, developer-ready product.
That included:
- Framing the problem and defining what success actually meant for viewers, creators and the business
- Directing research: surveys, interviews and a competitor teardown, and guiding my designer through parts of it
- Mapping user flows and information architecture for two very different user types
- Designing wireframes through to high-fidelity UI, and building out the project’s design system
- Reviewing and directing my designer’s work to keep it consistent with the overall product vision
- Running usability tests and iterating based on what actually broke
- Preparing final files, specs and documentation for developer handoff
The real challenge
Leading design on a two-sided product meant every decision had to work for viewers and creators at the same time, which isn’t always the same design.
Keeping that consistent across two people’s work made it even more important to have a clear system to design against.
From an idea to a working product
Three stages, each one earning the next.
Vibeo started as a concept: a streaming platform that rewards people for engaging, not just for existing. My job was to turn that concept into something people could actually use.
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01
Discovery
Aligning with the client’s goals, the users, and the direction the product needed to go.
What it produced: User personas, user needs and pain points, a competitive audit, and the core user journeys.
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02
Structure
Turning those insights into clear flows and a functional product structure. This is where personas and research turned into high-fidelity screens and an interactive prototype.
What it produced: A design system I built to keep everything, including the screens designed by the other designer on my team, consistent as the product grew.
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03
Delivery
Polishing the experience and preparing a design that was actually ready to be built, not just ready to be looked at.
By the end, the product had been argued with, tested and rebuilt enough times to hold up.
Every round of testing changed something along the way: sometimes small, like a label or the order of a step, sometimes structural, like how rewards were explained or how the creator dashboard was organised.
Key objectives
Four things the design had to do at once.
- Design an experience that feels rewarding to viewers without feeling gimmicky or exploitative
- Give creators clear, honest visibility into how their content earns money
- Build a system that scales: more users and more content shouldn’t mean more confusion
- Balance two different user goals, watching and earning, inside one coherent product
01 / Problem and challenge
People give platforms their time and attention. Most platforms give nothing back.
Video platforms today run on an old trade: you watch, they profit from your attention through ads and data, and you get the video. Meanwhile, creators are stuck depending on ad revenue and platform algorithms they can’t see inside of, let alone influence.
Two problems, really:
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For viewers
Engagement, watching, commenting, sharing, has no visible value. It just disappears into the platform’s numbers.
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For creators
Monetisation feels like a black box. Views go up, but why money does or doesn’t follow is unclear.
The core problem wasn’t “we need a new streaming app”. It was that the entire relationship between platform, viewer and creator needed rethinking.
02 / Strategic shift
The opportunity wasn’t a better player. It was a fairer system.
Early conversations treated this like a straightforward media app: better video quality, cleaner UI, maybe some social features. But that would have just been another YouTube clone with a new coat of paint.
The real shift happened when I stopped asking how we make watching videos better, and started asking how we make watching videos worth something for everyone involved.
Three challenges, one for each side
Every feature had to answer at least one of these without breaking the other two.
Once the problem was reframed, it broke down into three separate challenges.
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For viewers
How might we create a reward system that encourages genuine engagement without making users feel manipulated?
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For creators
How might we provide transparent performance insights that help creators improve their content strategy?
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For the platform
How might we prevent reward abuse while still maintaining a positive user experience?
03 / Understanding the users
Two very different audiences living on one platform.
I couldn’t research them the same way, or assume their needs overlapped, so I looked at this from three angles.
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Surveys
Sent to regular streaming platform users to understand habits, frustrations, and what a reward would even mean to them.
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Interviews
One-on-one conversations with both casual viewers and small to mid-size content creators, to hear the emotional side of the problem, not just the functional one.
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Competitor and platform audits
Studying how existing platforms handle, or fail to handle, engagement and monetisation.
The goal wasn’t to confirm what I already assumed. A few things I expected going in, like viewers wanting cash rewards, turned out to be only part of the story.
04 / Competitor analysis
Three platforms, each standing in for a different piece of the problem.
I picked competitors that each represented a different piece of what Vibeo was trying to solve, rather than just the biggest names in streaming.
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YouTube
The default benchmark for content discovery, watch experience and creator tools. Studied to understand what good looks like at scale, and where even a market leader still leaves creators guessing about monetisation.
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Twitch
Chosen for its creator-first monetisation model, subscriptions, bits and tipping, and its strong sense of community. Useful for understanding how real-time engagement translates into earnings.
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Rumble
One of the few mainstream platforms already experimenting with viewer-facing rewards. Studied specifically to see what worked, what felt forced, and what made their reward system feel more like a gimmick than a genuine value exchange.
Together, these three covered the three pillars Vibeo needed to get right: discovery, creator monetisation and viewer rewards, without me having to guess at all three from scratch.
05 / Survey results
The real product risk wasn’t building a rewards system. It was building one people actually trusted.
The survey went out to people who regularly watch content on platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Twitch, to understand attitudes toward earning while watching. A few findings shaped the direction early on:
- A large majority had used a watch-to-earn or rewards-based app before, and had stopped, mostly because the rewards felt too small or too confusing to claim
- Most respondents said they would trust a platform more if they could clearly see why they earned something, not just that they did
- On the creator side, the biggest complaint wasn’t earning too little. It was not understanding how earnings were calculated in the first place
06 / User personas
Two personas, because Vibeo really is two products sharing one platform.
Aarav Sharma
Age 24 Marketing executive, watching as a viewer
Aarav watches content the way most people do: to unwind, learn something, or kill time between meetings. He is open to earning rewards while doing it, and curious about discovering new creators along the way.
Pain points
- Unclear reward rules
- Hidden earning conditions
- Delayed reward updates
Goals
- Watch entertaining content
- Earn rewards during spare time
- Discover relevant creators
Neha Kapoor
Age 20 Content creator
Neha is building an audience and treats her content like a growing business. Views matter, but only if she can actually understand what is driving them and trust that the numbers are accurate.
Pain points
- Inconsistent analytics
- Lack of monetisation transparency
- Delayed performance reporting
Goals
- Grow her audience
- Increase engagement
- Track earnings accurately
Both personas were frustrated by the same root issue, showing up in different parts of the product.
Aarav didn’t trust how rewards worked; Neha didn’t trust how earnings were reported. That single insight ended up guiding almost every design decision that followed: clarity wasn’t a nice-to-have, it was the actual product.
07 / High-fidelity UI and screens
Four core features, each one answering a “how might we”.
The visual language across all four stayed clean and content-first. The platform’s job was to get out of the way of the video, while still making the reward and earnings layer feel present, not hidden.
01
Personalised video feed
A familiar, scroll-friendly home feed, continue watching, suggested for you, and tabs for all, trending, shorts and live, so viewers didn’t need to relearn how to browse. Behind it, a recommendation engine surfaces content based on:
- Watch history
- Interests
- Engagement behaviour
Why it mattersIt gave the “discover relevant creators” goal from Aarav’s persona somewhere to actually live, instead of sitting on a wishlist.
02
Reward progress tracking
Inside the video player, users can see, as they watch rather than as a number that appears afterwards:
- Eligibility progress
- Pending rewards
- Earned rewards
Design decisionInstead of instantly rewarding every single view, rewards unlock after meaningful engagement thresholds. That answered two questions at once: it made rewards feel earned rather than manipulative, and gave the platform a natural defence against reward abuse.
03
Wallet and earnings dashboard
A shared My Wallet space, with creator earnings, viewer earnings and current-month totals broken out separately so nothing gets mixed together and misread. Users can:
- View their balance
- Track transactions
- Withdraw earnings
Design goalGive people complete visibility into their reward status and financial activity, so nobody has to wonder where a number came from.
04
Creator analytics dashboard
Built for creators like Neha, with a visitor-location breakdown so creators can see who is actually watching, not just how many:
- Subscribers
- Views
- Average viewer time
- Impressions
Design decisionSeparating total views from validated views, a small but important distinction that answered the monetisation transparency frustration from research. Creators could see a genuine number instead of an inflated one, which mattered more to trust than any chart styling ever could.
Screens / Joining
Signing up, in as few fields as it takes.
Scroll or use arrow keys
Screens / Watching
The feed, and everywhere it leads.
Scroll or use arrow keys
Screens / Earning
Where the reward layer becomes visible.
Scroll or use arrow keys
Screens / Creating
Publishing a video, and seeing what it did.
Scroll or use arrow keys
Screens / The account
Settings, including the ones that unlock earning.
Design system
A light interface with one purple accent.
The system I built kept two designers, two audiences and a growing set of screens consistent: one typeface in three weights, a five-colour palette, and components used the same way from onboarding to creator analytics.
Colour
- Purple #7C3AED Primary buttons, active navigation and highlights
- Lavender #F9F6FF Page backgrounds
- Black #0C0C0C Text
- Green #34C759 Positive change and confirmations
- Red #EC5252 Negative change, live badges and destructive actions
Typography
SF Pro in its three weights: Light, Regular and Medium.
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Earn while you’re watching your favorite videos
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Daily Missions
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Home
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Phone Number
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Travel mistakes to avoid when in South Africa
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You watched 3/10 ads today
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24k Views • 6 months ago
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At least 8 characters
Measured from the UI screens in the Behance case study and scaled to a 1440px frame, so sizes are close rather than exact. Labels are text from the screens.
Buttons
Form fields
Selection and controls
Tags and badges
Cards
Radius, elevation and spacing
Corner radius
- Badge 4px
- Card 6px
- Button, field and segment 8px
- Search 999px
Patterns
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Sidebar navigation
Home, categories, subscriptions, community, watch history, wallet and profile.
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Video cards
Thumbnail, creator, title, views and age, with a progress bar for videos in progress.
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Stat cards
A value, its label and the change this week, in green or red.
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Reward progress bar
Coin milestones along a track, with the current position marked.
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Content chips
All, Trending, Shorts and Live filters above the feed.
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Stepped upload modal
Basic info, monetisation, privacy and publishing, and preview as tabs.
08 / Usability testing
Both groups wanted more clarity, not more features.
I ran moderated sessions with a mix of viewers and creators, walking them through core tasks: watching and earning rewards, checking a rewards balance, and reviewing creator earnings. What I learned:
- Viewers noticed the reward indicator but didn’t understand what action triggered it. They assumed it was random rather than tied to specific engagement
- Creators found the first version of the analytics dashboard overwhelming: too many metrics competing for attention, with no clear place to start
- That same pattern, clarity over features, kept repeating throughout testing
None of these were fixed by adding functionality. They were fixed by explaining the system better through the interface itself.
09 / Iterative design
Three changes, all of them about being upfront.
Based on testing, I made a few key changes:
- Added short, contextual micro-copy near the reward indicator explaining exactly what action just earned a reward, instead of assuming it was self-explanatory
- Restructured the creator dashboard around one headline metric, earnings, with supporting details available on demand, rather than showing everything at once
- Simplified the rewards claim flow from a multi-step process down to a single, clear confirmation
Key takeaway
People don’t distrust reward systems because the idea is bad. They distrust them because the systems are usually vague.
Once I stopped trying to make the rewards feel exciting and focused on making them feel clear and fair, the whole product got easier to design and easier to trust.
Balancing two different users, two different goals and one shared platform taught me that good design here wasn’t about choosing sides. It was about making sure both sides could see the same truth.
Every screen, in full, on Behance.
View the case study on Behance