Streamlining account activation for a 350K-user partnership promotion.
details
starz
web
lead product designer
context
The Starz x Metropolis partnership was a high-visibility initiative gifting 350,000 Metropolis customers one free month of Starz.
I designed the end-to-end flow to account for subscriptions, account creation, activation, settings, and post-trial conversions across a wide range of user scenarios.
work method
The promotion was meant to bring in a surge of new users to Starz.
Because of the tight timeline (1.5 weeks) and complexity, we held daily workshop meetings with design, partners, engineering, and product to make ends meet.
design decisions
A key aspect of this project: our partners wanted users to redeem the promo and start watching in one click.
Capturing users' emails at this step was important to prevent lost accounts and subscription issues later. My initial design prioritized email collection, but product felt it competed with the primary goal: getting users to download the app in one click.
I resolved this by introducing an optional "Claim Your Account" section lower on the page. While an email wasn't actually required, the framing encouraged users to provide one without interrupting the one-click download flow.
For users who didn't give an email at the beginning, we decided to allow them to add an email at the same time as they enter their payment details. This way, we wouldn't introduce any friction.
For users who did give an email at the beginning, no sweat. They enter their payment details like normal to continue watching.
handling edge case errors
Through partner conversations, a number of edge cases surfaced.
As I designed for each of these, I decided to trust our users and avoid overdesigning.
For users who already redeemed the promotion and select it again:
A simple "You've already claimed this" message and a reminder to check their email.
For logged in users:
A simple "Sorry, but this promotion doesn't apply to you."
(I debated landing users on the redeem page and letting them use another email, but ultimately decided to not overcomplicate.)
For users who try to use an existing email:
An in-line error message that lets them know they can't use this account.
outcomes & learnings
In just 1.5 weeks, I delivered the final designs and flows, and the partnership launched shortly after.
For a week and a half, product, engineering, and design spent hours together challenging ideas, questioning assumptions, brainstorming, joking, and working through tradeoffs in real time. People spoke up when they normally might have held back because everyone was invested in shipping on time.
That experience reinforced that I do my best work in highly collaborative teams where healthy debate and trust lead to better products :)