Spaces created
Spaces
Good ideas. Better together.
Blinkist’s first social community, connecting over a million curious minds.
MY ROLE
Domain Lead of Spaces
I led product strategy from vision and discovery to execution, then optimised the experience across mobile and web.THE CHALLENGE
Learning is better together
People wanted to share what they learned with friends and family, including people who were not members.PEOPLE CONNECTED
1m+
The opportunity
From sharing a title to learning together.
Interviews revealed a desire to share learnings with family and friends. Exploring external sharing uncovered a deeper need: a learning community inside the app.
Shaping the vision
A reason to come back and someone to share it with.
Research showed that people discover titles through others and are motivated by others’ progress. The first direction focused on people who already knew each other, with shared learning goals for teams.
The first release
From vision to MVP in six weeks.
Blinkist Connect introduced the inviter and invitee experience, with a mechanism for recommending titles to each other. The first version let people connect and share their learning plans.
InviteBring someone into your learning journey.
RecommendShare titles with someone you know.
ReturnDiscover what the other person is learning.
One connection was only the beginning.
The initiative connected more than 100,000 users within a few months. Feedback showed people wanted to connect with more than one person.
Usability testing and decoupling the technical foundation made it possible to connect beyond a shared plan.
What did we learn?
Make the value easier to understand.
I improved the welcome screen, making the video explainer more visible and adding a clear breakdown of Spaces’ value. Creation did not increase, but user intent grew and feedback about confusion decreased.
Removing a barrier
A Space needs something worth sharing.
45% of user-created Spaces had no recommendations. An AI recommender suggested titles based on a Space’s content, with suggestions and an add-titles action integrated into creation and invitation.
Uplift in the number of titles added after introducing recommendations.
Listening and iterating
See the progress. Keep the conversation going.
A one-question feedback module helped identify two highly requested features: finished statuses to track consumption within a Space, and reactions with comments to respond to recommendations.
A learning community. Built through iteration.
A year after the MVP, Spaces had connected over a million people. The experience grew from sharing with one person into a way to organise titles, recommend them and learn together.
The work continued into the consolidated Library and expert-curated Public Spaces.
Users connected
Relative uplift in week 8 retention
Engagement
