Twitch is where millions of people come together live every day to chat, interact, and make their own entertainment together.
I joined Twitch as a Product Designer in 2013, in 2015 I stepped up to a leadership role as a Senior Design Manager until I left in 2021. Below are some higlights from my time at Twitch.
2013
Product Designer
I joined Twitch as an early Product Designer, primarily focused on our non-web experiences such as Mobile & TV.
Merch Store
One of the first products I worked on was our Twitch Merch Store. Working closely with our merchandising partners, I was able to design a store that fit seamlessly into the Twitch experience.
Xbox One App
I led the design and front-end user experience for our Xbox One app, delivering an engaging and intuitive interface. In 2014, we launched a redesigned personalized homepage, introduced filtering integrations with popular games like Call of Duty, and added support for Past Broadcasts and Clips, enhancing user engagement and content accessibility.
2014
Android App
In early 2014, our Android community provided significant feedback, highlighting the need for improvement. While the iOS app had been our primary focus, I received leadership approval to spearhead a complete overhaul of the Android app.
Upon launch, the revamped app led to a substantial boost in engagement, with active users on Android surging and monthly active users increasing by 20%.
Chromecast Support
One of the most common use cases we observed among Twitch viewers was casting the stream they were watching to their TV (e.g., via Xbox) while using their mobile device to engage with the chat.
Collaborating closely with the product team, I proposed adding Chromecast support to our Android app. With this feature, users could cast their stream to any Chromecast-enabled device, and the app would automatically enhance the chat experience on their phone. The chat view would expand to make interactions more engaging, while the stream continued playing seamlessly on the TV.
Watch with Friends on Xbox
Twitch is a platform where people connect with friends, and to enhance this experience, I collaborated closely with Product and Engineering to launch Watch with Friends on Xbox One. This feature integrated our Friends functionality into the Xbox One app, enabling users to watch streams together and chat in real-time.
Beyond designing the user experience, I developed a notification component styled to match Xbox Toast Notifications. These notifications appear when a friend joins the stream you're watching, making it easier to stay connected and engaged. The component's versatility and effectiveness led to its widespread adoption in subsequent Twitch features on Xbox One.
2015
Design Manager
In 2015, I was promoted to Design Manager, where I led a team of six designers. I provided strategic guidance and direction, collaborating with product and engineering leadership to define roadmaps for key areas, including Browse, Discovery, Channel Pages, and Chat.
Whispers (1-to-1 messaging)
As Twitch Chat transitioned away from traditional IRC, one widely used feature, /w (whisper), needed a modern update. My team and I worked on creating a more accessible and contemporary version of this direct messaging tool.
The challenge was to create a whispers feature that seamlessly integrated into the platform while preserving the priority of our live player and chat experience, ensuring uninterrupted engagement for users. To accomplish this, my team designed a system where any message box would stick to the bottom of the page and allow the user to collapse it, giving them the flexibility to focus on the content they want to see.
Channel Feed
A key initiative for the Community team was to provide streamers with more ways to engage with their audiences. We explored this by introducing a channel feed, enabling streamers to share announcements, as well as showcase their latest clips, videos, and highlights, fostering deeper connections with their community.
2017
Twitch Desktop App
In 2016, Twitch acquired Curse, a desktop app that fostered communities around games like World of Warcraft. My team collaborated closely with the Curse design team to integrate the Twitch experience into their desktop app, aligning both platforms to enhance community engagement.
2018
Senior Design Manager
In 2018, I was promoted to Senior Design Manager and successfully expanded my team to include 12 designers. As Twitch's broader design team continued to grow, I prioritized maintaining our ability to deliver impactful products.
To achieve this, I promoted one of my designers to Design Manager to oversee Browse, Discovery, and Channel Pages, allowing my direct team to focus on Community and Trust & Safety initiatives.
Chat & Messaging Guidelines
One of my first initiatives with my team was to create guidelines for chat and messaging. Our primary customer is our chatters. We need to continue to provide a great user experience. Our secondary customer is our internal stakeholders who need to build new features into Twitch Chat for our chatters and viewers.
The internal guidelines were created to help our stakeholders understand the chatters experience and how to build new features that are both functional and enjoyable. It helped reduce product development timelines while maintaining a high quality user experience.
Product Development Process
While working on the guidelines, I noticed a lack of clear structure in our product development process. Teams often engaged cross-functional partners too late, causing delays in feature releases. Additionally, new hires lacked clear guidance on collaboration practices.
To address this, I collaborated closely with leadership across Design, Product, Engineering, Legal, UXR, and Safety to create a streamlined process that improved efficiency and accelerated feature delivery.
The documentation emphasized understanding user problems and working closely with UXR teams to ensure we were addressing the right challenges, fostering a more cohesive and user-focused development approach.
2019
Channel Points
Channel Points was a new way for creators to recognize and reward their community members with points for watching, following, subscribing, and taking other actions on their channel.
Prior to Channel Points, the only way for a viewer to show their support was to subscribe or donate to the creator. With our goal to build around Connection & Belonging, giving viewers a way to show their support via non-monetary means was a great new innovative way to enhance the viewer experience.
2020
Mod Dashboard
Mod View is a customizable channel view that includes everything you need to moderate channels on Twitch. One of the many projects on Trust & Safety that my team was reponsible for.
The project was challenging but fulfilling as it touched many cross-functional teams including, Product, Engineering, Trust & Safety, Legal, and UXR.
2021
Chat Replies
My team focused heavily on improving conversational chat. We noticed that many new viewers would often not know they got a reply from another chatter. By introducing chat replies, we enabled users to respond seamlessly to one another and intuitively track their conversations.
Over 30% of our Core+ chatters use chat replies on a daily basis.