TikTok One

Lead Content Designer

Work performed: H1 2025

TikTok One (TTO) is an integrated marketplace designed to facilitate seamless collaboration between advertisers and creators. It brings together the Creative Center, Creative Marketplace, and Creative Exchange, creating a seamless hub for content creation and brand partnerships.

 

Now, the big question we faced was: How do we attract new users to join and get started with TTO? That was our challenge.

  1. Understanding Our Users: Personas and Journeys

First things first, we took a close look at who’s already on the platform. We asked ourselves: Who are they? What do they do? How much experience do they have with advertising? And most importantly, how can we make joining TTO appealing to different types of users?

 Based on this, we developed four user personas to represent our audience, each with their unique journeys.

2. Looking at the competition

Next, we dug into how other platforms and apps handle onboarding—think AirBnB, Bumble, Duolingo, and Airbnb. We examined their steps, tone, and messaging to see what worked well. We wanted to understand their approach to guiding new users, and more importantly, how to keep it consistent within our own ecosystem—like onboarding to a Business Center account.

3. Brainstorming and exploration

With insights in hand, the fun began—we started brainstorming different ways to communicate value to our varied audiences. We played around with how to present the benefits: should we emphasize trust or highlight ease of use? Performance or growth? We experimented with different tones for different groups.

Audience 1: Organic discovery

Main messages here were revolved around getting paid for branded content and providing guidance for first timers.

Audience 2: Low-context users found through in-app banners and push notifications

Messages here are more or less the same than above, but with a bit more explanation and emphasis around growth, trust and ease of use.

Audience 3: Invitation-based users (brand link and QR code)

Here we’re using more advanced language like “collab” and touting access exclusive brand campaigns and tracking performance across different brands.

4. Final onboarding flows

Where we landed and what we’re testing are two flows targeting low and high awareness users.

Low awareness users get a few more screens with additional values and more an encouraging and aspirational tone.

The high awareness audience features more advanced language (“collab”) and focuses on high-level goals and actions like managing brand deals.