2026-05 · Lead Product Designer
Contest Feature
Designing and reviewing the implementation of a UGC loop — 4-step submission flow, automatic thumbnail generation, and a results tab.
Background
A new feature shipped in May 2026 to take Slide Academy users’ output and spread it across the community — creating a UGC loop of “easy to submit → seen → keep going.” Design and implementation review ran concurrently and intensively that month.
The feature was large in scope: submission flow, timeline, prize cards, results tab, and onboarding video. I led both the design and the implementation review.
Problem
- A submission flow that’s too complex and users don’t post; too simple and it stays a one-off — the experience had to land at the right depth
- The side chores of submission (like generating a thumbnail) shouldn’t get pushed onto the user
- Results announcements have a tendency to feel anticlimactic. After all that buildup, the celebration moment needed real direction
- Operationally, the UI had to switch per phase (entry → judging → results)
Approach
- 4-step submission flow: Broke the required information into 4 steps so users never had to guess “what’s next” at any point
- Automatic thumbnail generation: Implemented Codex App Server in 3 parallel calls (~38s per image) to auto-generate OGP-style thumbnails from the user’s own text
- Phase-based UI: Switched between Entry / Judging / Results UIs, with URL parameters that let us preview each phase
- Results tab redesign: Made the grand-prize a clickable hero, organized excellence and judge’s-prize winners into a single-column horizontal card layout, and converted prize icons to SVGs for brand consistency
- Onboarding video embed: Surfaced a Remotion-built walkthrough video both at submit-button-press time and via an always-on ”?” mark in the top right
Outcome
- v1 of the contest is ready to ship — Funda member preview testing first, then general release
- With submission flow, results tab, and thumbnail generation all in place, users now get the full loop: “submit it casually, get seen, want to submit again”
- As a side effect, leaning heavily on Surapen and the brand assets helped reinforce the brand itself
Takeaways
A UGC feature only starts spinning when three beats hit together: “easy to submit,” “gets seen,” and “you keep going.” Auto-generating the thumbnail in particular dropped a real psychological barrier for users.
At the same time, each operational phase (entry period / judging / results) needs a different UI, so the phase-management ops design turned out to be equally important.