ShoutOut VIP redesign: a fan experience their own team keeps building

ShoutOut VIP connects fans with Dutch celebrities for personal video messages. The platform was growing, but the user experience and the brand were lagging behind. So for ShoutOut VIP, we did a UX and UI redesign. We then handed everything over to their own development team.

That last part makes this case different from most. We did not build it ourselves. The client has an in-house team that makes the software. So our brief was a design that team can carry forward without a designer. And that is a different job from making nice screens.

What was the challenge at ShoutOut VIP?

A growing platform with an experience that had not grown with it. Two audiences need each other, fans and Dutch celebrities, but they expect different things from the same environment. On top of that, the brand had to be recognisable abroad too. And the in-house team had to be able to build the design themselves.

Two sides of one platform sounds straightforward. In practice, a fan wants to order something quickly, while a celebrity mainly wants an overview of what is coming in. If you forget one of the two, the platform works for nobody. A fan with nothing on offer buys nothing, and a celebrity without fans stops.

And the platform was still growing. A design that is right now must still be right a year from now. That calls for a foundation that can handle expansion.

Why did we choose this approach?

Because the team builds in-house. A design that consists of nothing more than nice screens at handover gets diluted along the way. Every developer fills the gaps in their own way. That is why we did not deliver a loose set of screens, but a design with documentation and a design system.

My view: a design without a design system is a snapshot. It looks good at delivery and no longer does three sprints later. Not because developers are sloppy, but because they have to make choices nobody has set down for them.

So we defined components, colours and states. We also stayed in regular contact with the team during the build. That keeps decisions traceable, instead of based on gut feeling.

You could, of course, hire a designer who joins every sprint. That works, as long as the designer stays. A defined system stays, even when people change. For a team that builds in-house, I think that is the wisest choice. Working on a growing platform yourself? Then also read what an MVP is and when to keep building.

How did we approach it?

With research and iterative design rounds. In them, we worked out the user journey for both sides: fans and Dutch celebrities. Around that, we created detailed documentation and a design system in Figma. During the build, we kept in regular contact with the in-house team.

What is in the design system?

A defined set of colours, typography and reusable components, including their states. A state is how an element looks in a particular situation: a button you tap, a field with an error or a list that is still loading. It is exactly those details that often get lost at handover.

A design system makes a design buildable by another team. It also keeps the product consistent as it expands later. A new page is then made of existing parts, not of a new interpretation.

How does the handover to the in-house team work?

With documentation that explains how and why, not just what. That way, developers do not have to guess what was intended. Where questions did come up, they could ask us directly during the build.

What does the ShoutOut VIP redesign look like?

A new interface with a brand identity that is recognisable internationally. The user journey is worked out for both sides, so a fan and a celebrity each have their own route within the same design language. Everything is defined in Figma, from colour to component.

Recognisable internationally mainly means a brand that does not depend on Dutch context. Anyone who opens the platform without knowing the Dutch celebrities should still understand what is happening and what they can order. That places demands on the visuals, but also on how clear the route is. A good design explains itself, even to someone who does not know the names.

What did it deliver?

A relaunch of the platform with a brand identity that is recognisable internationally. The in-house team builds on a defined set of components. New screens stay within the same design language, even without a designer involved. That was exactly the goal.

According to the original case, the new UX and UI also led to higher conversion rates. No figure was given there. So I do not give a percentage here either. I would rather not put a figure on a case page that I cannot back up.

We built a very different two-sided platform for VIRPP, where artists release music. There too, one environment had to work for different users.