Sina Weibo: Account Dashboard
Redesigned a high-traffic dashboard into a modular, role-based system—improving usability, engagement, and long-term scalability.
Role | UX Designer
Company | Sina Weibo
Timeline | 2020
Focus Areas | Modular UX, Role-Based Personalization, Card System Design, Layout Architecture
Impact | 33M+ daily visits, +23.8% PV growth post-launch, +16.6% increase in average open frequency, scalable card system adopted by multiple business teams for future feature expansion
Project Overview
Account Dashboard wasn’t just a settings page — it was a messy but high-traffic hub quietly doing too much for too many people. With millions visiting daily, it had turned into a catch-all space for tools, stats, services, and experiments.
I led the redesign to bring structure to the chaos: rethinking it as a modular, role-sensitive system that could support creators, casual users, and a growing lineup of internal features — all without losing clarity or control.
Background
Weibo’s mobile Account Dashboard is one of the most visited pages in the app, with over 33 million daily visits. At first glance, it appears to serve users — and it does — but the real complexity lies in the fact that this page carries two equally critical roles:
Users: To users(including general users and KOLs), this page feels like “my space” — a place where all personal content, features, and tools come together. Weibo has long framed this as a personal territory, with the expectation that “everything about me lives here.”
Internal Business Stakeholders: To the platform’s internal teams, the dashboard is a strategic entry point — a high-traffic space used to expose services, campaigns, and business modules. It serves as the “front door” for feature engagement, content creation tools, and retention mechanisms.
This tension between user simplicity and business complexity created significant UX and layout challenges — and made the existing page increasingly difficult to maintain and scale.
Current Problems
The dual role of the Account Dashboard — serving both users and internal business teams — led to a set of problems on both sides.
No role-based differentiation
The design failed to tailor experiences for different user types. KOLs saw irrelevant tools; general users encountered unused creator features.Inefficient single-column layout
All business modules were displayed as one card per row — a structure that worked site-wide but was space-inefficient and limited content exposure within the dashboard.Weak interaction guidance
Most cards followed a minimal “icon + title” pattern, with small corner text for actions. Users couldn’t easily understand or act on many entries.Lack of visual hierarchy and appeal
The visual design was monotonous, with a single icon area offering limited visual guidance. The lack of differentiation made the cards visually flat and easy to ignore — especially for lower-tier modules.
Goals
The redesign needed to resolve the tension between user needs and business demands, and turn the Account Dashboard into a modular, scalable space that could grow with the platform.
FOR USERS
Personalized role-based experience: Differentiate between casual users and content creators, providing each group with the most relevant tools and content
Streamlined access to key features: Make daily tools (wallet, tasks, stats, rewards) easier to find and act on
More intuitive interactions: Shift from passive “icon + title” entries to actionable cards with clear visual hierarchy
FOR BUSINESS TEAMS
Higher visibility for growing modules: Improve card layout efficiency to support more features per screen without overwhelming the user
Scalable design system: Create modular card types that can accommodate a variety of services without needing one-off designs
Better traffic conversion: Strengthen operational guidance and card clickability to drive interaction with internal features
Design Strategy
Structuring the Chaos: A Three-Part Modular Framework
Given the account dashboard’s role as one of Weibo’s most content-dense and strategically important pages, the design team began by restructuring its entire architecture before making any visual or interaction-level changes. The goal was to define a sustainable framework that could guide both the redesign and future feature additions.
We ultimately divided the dashboard into three core functional zones:
1. Basic Function Entry Points
This topmost section contains the core general-use tools—functions that are widely used and essential to daily activity. Features like Weibo posts (6.48M daily clicks), Settings (6.26M), Follows (6.17M), Avatar/Profile editing (2.3M), and Wallet (1.3M) all had daily usage in the millions.
Because these features are fundamental, the redesign approach here was conservative but focused on clarity and usability:
Stage 1 → 2: Removed redundant information (e.g., repeated profile name/avatar), and consolidated common actions (e.g., Favorites, History, Drafts).
Stage 2 → 3: Introduced clear visual separation between two blocks: data display (e.g., followers, posts) and action entry points (e.g., My Wallet, Albums). This reinforced user understanding of what is static info vs. what can be tapped and used.
2. Role-Specific Business Modules
This middle section introduces a Weibo-specific feature: segmentation by user roles. These modules were designed distinctly for content consumers (regular users) and creators (professional users), forming the second-highest priority zone after basic functions.
For Professional Users (Content Creators):
A dedicated creator dashboard was introduced, combining multiple formerly scattered tools into one cohesive area:Header Section: Labeling and user identity
Data Feedback Block: Daily follower growth, post engagement, and revenue snapshots
Production Entry Points: Access to publishing tools, earnings center, data center
Official Campaigns: Incentives, training academies, traffic support features
This layout allows creators to quickly monitor, manage, and act on content performance, reducing the friction of bouncing between modules (see Fig. P13–P15).
For General Users (Content Consumers):
This section surfaces task systems, check-in programs, rewards, and content discovery features, optimized for high-frequency revisits.
The goal here was to boost lightweight engagement and promote click-through behavior. Cards used incentives like badges (“￥0.3 reward today”) and gamified cues (“rank #3 among friends”) to increase conversion.
3. Other Business Modules
This zone contained a rapidly growing list of internal tools, services, and promotional campaigns. Its biggest problem was overcrowding and poor visibility.
To fix this, we introduced two key strategies:
A Dual-Column Layout:
Replacing the original one-card-per-row structure, we adopted a dual-stream grid to dramatically increase business card density and reduce scroll fatigue.A Standardized Card Framework:
Each card followed a consistent information flow:Identify → What is this service?
Understand → Why is it important?
Act → What can the user do?
Structurally, every card included:
Title Zone (name, description, entry icon)
Content Zone (visual data, thumbnails, highlights)
Action Zone (primary CTA or deep-link button)
This allowed for flexible scaling across vastly different service types without sacrificing consistency.
Card Type Classification:
We reviewed and categorized all existing business cards into four visual types:Textual
Data-Driven
Image-Based
Service-Oriented
Each type was then given a tailored design style that matched its content needs.
Display Logic by Priority:
We ranked services based on user data and business importance:High-Frequency Key Services (e.g., “Frequent Visits,” “Super Topic”) were shown first, in large single-column cards to highlight multiple entry points
Standard Services followed
Low-Frequency Utilities (e.g., security confirmations, download management) were compressed into smaller cards and positioned toward the bottom of the scroll
This tiered logic allowed us to balance feature visibility with UI efficiency.
Together, these three zones created a unified but flexible layout strategy that:
Preserved core user habits
Created distinct flows for different user roles
Dramatically improved the visual efficiency and scalability of business services
The outcome was not just a cleaner dashboard—but a framework for sustainable growth.
Results
The redesign turned a cluttered tool page into a modular, role-aware dashboard that serves both user needs and business goals — while laying the groundwork for scalable future expansion.
What Improved
After launching the redesigned Account Dashboard, the metrics showed significant improvement across the board—demonstrating stronger engagement and higher content exposure:
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pageviews (PV) | ~1.78B | 2.2B | +23.8% |
| Unique Visitors (UV) | ~349M | 370M | +6.1% |
| Avg. Visits per User | 5.0 | 5.8 | +16.6% |
Long-Term Value
Created a design system for card-based content blocks, improving scalability
Improved the platform’s ability to personalize content per user role
Made the dashboard a more strategic entry point for business features, helping new services land more effectively.
Redesigning the account dashboard challenged me to think beyond surface-level UX and focus on system-level design. It required consolidating diverse business needs and user roles into a streamlined, modular experience—balancing specificity with universality. The thinking process was iterative and data-driven, involving constant refinement as I analyzed user behavior and business priorities. I learned how to build scalable structures like card-based frameworks and role-based modules that flex with evolving product needs. More importantly, the project sharpened my ability to design with both structure and flexibility in mind—delivering not just a visual upgrade, but a system that continues to adapt and support long-term platform growth.