TED.com Topic Integration

User insights revealed that TED's homepage struggled with an intuitive discovery process, leading to a significant decline in video starts and user engagement.

As Design Director and Product Design Lead, it was my job to help the team integrate thematic discovery into the homepage, aligning with how users naturally seek new content. Our solutions created a more personalized experience, enhancing the way users discover and engage with new TED Talks.

Role: Design Director + Senior Product Designer
Team: Tricia Maia, Robert Spica, Bret Sorkness
Work: User experience / Design / User testing
Timeline: 3 months

Topic discovery

Based on user feedback and testing, we integrated TED’s topic feature from TED.com’s Index page into the top of the homepage. We evaluated two designs: one with simple topic chips and another with robust filter features.

Variation 1 saw the most engagement, with a 14% increase in video starts on mobile, leading us to implement this topic feature on the mobile homepage and continue optimizing it for desktop.

Design development

Building on user insights and our new visual design direction for TED, I explored creative and effective ways to integrate topics and promote discovery and engagement into TED’s homepage.

Future integration

As we refine the homepage design, we're exploring a prominent hero section and a dashboard for browsing specific topic categories, with plans to launch these features by the end of 2024.