From workstation analysis to a mobile pulse-check.

The web product worked. It just lived at a desk.

As Founding Designer, I worked with one other designer to build the 0-to-1 Viewstats web platform: dense dashboards for analyzing channel performance, comparing videos, and finding growth opportunities.

The web platform reached 500k+ creators in approximately six months. That is traction achieved by the web build—not an adoption result for the later iOS app.

That success set up the next problem. As Design Manager, I led the 0-to-1 native iOS companion—and the real question was not how to shrink the dashboards, but what a creator actually needs when they check a phone between posts.

A number on its own doesn’t tell a creator anything.

On the web, creators had time to dig: filter, compare, and build their own context. On a phone they have seconds. A raw figure like “2.1M views this week” raises more questions than it answers—is that good? Better than last week? Better than channels like mine?

So I framed the mobile experience around one job: give a quick, trustworthy read on performance, with context built in, and keep the deeper analytics one tap away. That principle—context over raw numbers—shaped the architecture across 40+ views.

Finance apps had already solved “am I up or down?”

Mobile YouTube analytics was relatively underserved, so I pushed the team to look beyond direct competitors. Financial apps such as Robinhood and Public answer the same question creators have—how am I doing, compared to what?—in a few seconds on a small screen.

We borrowed specific mechanics, not a visual style: sparkline micro-charts for direction at a glance, ±24h baseline delta badges that make the comparison period explicit, and progressive-disclosure cards that lead with a summary and hold the detail underneath.

• Sparkline micro-charts show direction without opening a full chart.
• ±24h baseline delta badges answer “compared to when?”
• Progressive-disclosure cards let creators scan first and inspect on demand.

Start where creators check most often.

I used Home, Top Lists, Favorites, and My Profile to establish the iOS system’s atomic visual patterns, color tokens, and layout primitives. These are the surfaces a creator opens most, so they were the right place to prove the quick-read pattern: search, ranked rows, summary cards, and clear navigation.

Settling hierarchy, spacing, card structure, and semantic up/down color here gave the team one shared language for 40+ views. The denser channel and video analytics could then reuse proven pieces instead of inventing a new visual language.

Home: search and discovery

One clear starting point: find a channel fast, or browse categories when you don’t have one in mind.

Top Lists: browse rankings

Rankings give every number a neighborhood—where a channel stands is often more useful than the count itself.

Favorites: followed channels

The channels a creator checks repeatedly—their own and their competitors’—kept in one focused list.

My Profile: account navigation

The same system extended to settings, so the app feels consistent end to end.

Summary first. Depth on demand.

Channel Overview and Video Detail carry the heaviest data: view curves, subscriber trends, similar channels, engagement, A/B tests, and title changes. Showing all of it at once would recreate the desktop problem on a smaller screen.

Scrollable cards and lightweight tabs lead with the headline performance, then separate comparisons and change history underneath. Creators can move from a quick scan into real analysis without losing track of which channel or video they’re looking at.

Channel Overview

Lead with how the channel is performing, then let tabs hold videos, similar channels, and about information.

Video Detail and Change Gallery

Put performance and changes in the same place, so a creator can see whether a new title or thumbnail actually moved the numbers.

Answer “where do I stand?” without a single search.

The clearest expression of context over raw numbers was a feature I proposed and designed: Current Top Lists, a module inside Channel Overview that shows every ranking a channel currently holds.

Before it, ranking context lived in a separate Top Lists area—a creator would have to go looking for their own channel. Bringing it onto the channel page means the answer arrives with the numbers: not just “2.1M views,” but where that places you right now. Each ranking also links into the full list, turning a personal check-in into a path for discovering rising competitors.

Lead the team while staying close to the work.

This was not a strategy-only or handoff-only role. I balanced product direction with daily design execution and implementation support.

Web traction. A native app built around context.

The founding-design chapter helped deliver the web platform that reached 500k+ creators in approximately six months. That is a web-platform outcome.

The Design Manager chapter delivered a native iOS architecture, a reusable design system, and a context-first translation of dense analytics across 40+ views, including the Current Top Lists feature. I crafted key flows, directed reviews, and partnered with engineering on specs and QA. I departed before the mobile launch; the design shown reflects April 2025, and the App Store image documents the subsequently published app.

Mobile isn’t a smaller dashboard. It’s a different question.

The biggest lesson was to design for the moment, not the data set. Once we agreed the phone should answer “how am I doing right now?”, decisions about what to show, what to hide, and what to build next—like Current Top Lists—became much easier to make and to defend with product and engineering.