From editorial content to creative community
Content
Content
TL;DR
Voicemod Tuna was designed to address the shortage of fresh content for our users to enjoy during gaming sessions. We built a platform where they could discover, create, and share new content made for and by the community. It started as a standalone website but is now fully integrated into Voicemod.
Before developing it, we conducted extensive user research to identify the most pressing pain points, which led us to experiment with multiple solutions.
Following the release, we also developed an AI-powered auto-moderation tool to help curate content.
TL;DR
Voicemod Tuna was designed to address the shortage of fresh content for our users to enjoy during gaming sessions. We built a platform where they could discover, create, and share new content made for and by the community. It started as a standalone website but is now fully integrated into Voicemod with thousands of new sounds added monthly.
Before developing it, we conducted extensive user research to identify the most pressing pain points, which led us to experiment with multiple solutions.
Following the release, we continue with the product development with improvements like an AI-powered auto-moderation tool to help curate content or the possibility to upload voices too.
My Role
I led the discovery, design, and analysis phases of the project, making sure we delivered a seamless and engaging experience.
After the launch (and while I continued overseeing the product) I helped the team identify, ideate, and ship new features using the data we were collecting.
Timeline
2020 - 2022
Background
What is Voicemod?
Voicemod is a freemium app that lets gamers and streamers modify their voice in real time and trigger sound effects during gaming sessions. It offers both FREE and PRO plans, with exclusive access to premium voices, curated soundboards, and the Voicelab (a state-of-the-art voice creator).
Production speed, our biggest pain
We had a dedicated content team producing premium sounds and voices. But the pace of internet trends made it nearly impossible to keep up while maintaining high quality.
As a result, many users turned to other platforms to find the content they needed and often leaving Voicemod (18% of uninstalls were due to this).
Business Goal
Transition to a hybrid model that combines curated premium content with user-generated content (UGC), to keep up with trends and empower the community.
\ 1 User Research
Learning about our users' behavior through data
At first we looked at the data we already had
We analyzed user behavior using Amplitude and internal database queries, and combined that with feedback from satisfaction surveys and uninstall reasons.
70% of PRO users used their own custom sounds more than Voicemod’s
FREE users frequently changed the sounds in their soundboards
45% of users who uninstalled cited “lack of relevant or trendy content”
But we needed to know more
To dig deeper, we conducted qualitative interviews with FREE and PRO users.
We had the opportunity to interview a wide range of users, from teenagers to people in their twenties with different concerns, needs and problems.
These are some of the insights we got that helped us define the final solution:
Users wanted to express themselves creatively through sound
They were excited to share their creations and gain recognition within the community.
It was difficult to discover new, relevant or trending sounds inside the app.
Users were frustrated by the manual process of importing content from other platforms.
\ 2 Objectives
Framing the Challenges
[Goal 1]
How might we help users discover relevant and trendy content without leaving Voicemod?
[Goal 2]
How might we encourage users to create and share their own sounds?
[Goal 3]
How might we ensure quality while scaling up community-generated content?
[Goal 4]
How might we increase retention and conversion for FREE users through community engagement?
\ 3 Ideation
Co-Creating and Validating Solutions
Testing approach
We ran ideation workshops with different stakeholders from the team (product, content, marketing, and engineering) to explore possible directions, selected the most promising ideas and prototyped them for testing.
- Maze tests (with over 200 responses)
- 1-on-1 interviews with FREE and PRO users
- Fast feedback loops with our Discord community
This iterative process helped us understand what excited users, and what didn’t.
A platform to share custom voice presets (previously shared informally on our Discord community)
“I used to screenshot my settings and send them in Discord. This is way easier—and now my friends can just try my voice instead of copying everything.”
— Liam, 16
“I made this creepy echo voice for horror games and people actually liked it! Feels cool to have something that’s mine that others use.”
— Nina, 14
A sound-based social network inside Voicemod for discovering and following user content
“It feels like Youtube but just for funny sounds. I could spend hours just scrolling and testing stuff in my soundboard.”
— Jordan, 18
"I liked that I could follow other users who make cool meme sounds. It’s more fun than just downloading random stuff.”
— Eli, 15
A revival of a past idea: a marketplace for community-created sounds
“Being able to find packs or themes made by famous is super cool”
— Sofía, 17
“I made this creepy echo voice for horror games and people actually liked it! Feels cool to have something that’s mine that others use.”
— Nina, 14
\ 4 Solution
A User-Powered Sound Discovery Platform
Our chosen solution was a lightweight external platform where users could upload, discover, and share short audio clips, with a direct integration to Voicemod for one-click import.
This MVP allowed us to validate the core experience quickly at the same time allowing us to iterate and modify the platform to try to achieve new objectives.
Why external at first?
- Legal risks around copyrighted content
- Technical constraints of full integration
- Need to validate user interest before scaling
[Landing Page]
[Profile Page]
[Sound Editor Page]
[Sound Cards Detail]
[Modals]
\ 5 Results
A High-Impact MVP
The platform launched to strong adoption and immediate signs of user engagement. The MVP proved there was clear demand for UGC, and that it could drive meaningful business results.
+38%
Increase in custom sound usage among FREE users
+11%
Conversion uplift from FREE to PRO
+17%
Weekly retention boost in Voicemod for Tuna users
-8%
Decrease in Voicemod uninstalls
+20k
Sounds uploaded in the first month alone
\ 6 Key Learnings
Insights that helped us shape Voicemod’s future
Users are eager to create and share when given the right tools
Community content can rival editorial quality, especially for trend relevance
Removing friction from the content flow significantly improves engagement
Sometimes, building your product outside is the fastest way to test big ideas
Encouraging community creativity is a strategic asset, not a side effect
\ 7 Next Steps
Scaling What Worked
[Improved Sound editor]
[Automatic AI moderator tool]
[Voicemod App integration]