Index № 90-seconds-rebuild June 2022 · 90 Seconds Ship · 2022
90 Seconds Rebuild cover

90 Seconds Rebuild

Rebuilt a decade-old global video platform without breaking the customers who already trusted it.

When I joined 90 Seconds in 2019, the brand was already a decade old. People who used the product knew its quirks, its rhythm, its charm. It wasn’t broken; it had simply outgrown itself. The challenge wasn’t to reinvent it. It was to make it feel like itself again, only clearer, faster, more alive.

Context

A 10+ year-old global video creation platform with active enterprise customers, a working brand, and accumulated legacy systems. Any rebuild had to ship into live workflows without disrupting the teams already running their production work on the product. No quiet beta period, no maintenance window long enough to do anything radical.

90 Seconds "Discover" homepage on the web in a dark navy theme. The 90 Seconds wordmark sits top-left, with primary navigation Solution, Customer Success, Our Thinking, Inspiration, Log in, and a blue "Get started" CTA. The hero "Discover 90 Seconds" stacks beside a short subtitle, and a four-card grid frames the three product entry points: a tall blue "Solution: Powering video creation at scale" card, a pink "Customer Success: Our amazing case studies" card, a dark "Our Thinking: Our newest features and take on trends" card, and a magenta "Inspiration: Awesome videos made for our clients" card. A dashboard search bar peeks above the fold below.

What I designed

Brand, product, identity, and platform as one continuous rebuild rather than four separate workstreams. Customer inventory, asset review, approvals, ordering, production tracking, and delivery workflows folded into a single connected platform, instead of the federation of disconnected modules the product had grown into. Enterprise buying, rollout, and operations workflows simplified to support funding and growth. Led 5 designers and partnered with 30+ engineers across a global team.

The trade-off

The temptation on a project this old is always to start over: new tech stack, new branding, new everything. Clean slate, faster decisions, less legacy debt. We held the opposite line: legacy isn’t a burden, it’s a compass. It tells you what still works and what never should have been touched. We didn’t start from scratch. We started from memory: keeping what users already trusted, replacing only what was actively in the way. The cost was discipline: every change had to justify itself against the existing surface, and team enthusiasm for “while we’re at it” had to be redirected. The win was that the new product didn’t feel new. It felt like something remembered, rediscovered, not redesigned.

90 Seconds "Create a new order" page. Top header shows USD $5,400 and a blue "Next: Configure" CTA. The page asks "Choose a package" with three cards (Best price $2,400, Best value $5,400, Best quality $7,400, with the middle one selected). A Team section adds a Premium Camera Operator at $2,500 (8 hours) and a Premium Director at $2,900 (4 hours), with a Recommended extras strip below. A right-rail "Customer Story" panel walks through Shoot and Edit steps with Location, Date, and Duration dropdowns, a "Run my creation" toggle, and an estimated total of SGD $10,800.

What it changed

Ordering speed up 6x. Delivery accelerated 39%. Customer workflows continued without disruption through the transition. Enterprise buying simplified enough to support funding and growth at the company level. The rebuild became the foundation Content Manager and the rest of the platform’s evolution were built on.

90 Seconds "Delivery" hub for a Customer Story Solution. Breadcrumb: Delivery > Customer Stories > Customer Story Solution. A wide hero card shows the customer story video cued up with team avatars, a "Due: Next Week, 26 June 2024" badge and a "1 of 3 services completed" progress bar. Below, a Standard Shoot row sits at "1 of 2 Services completed". The Delivery Hub section organises the brief, shoot and footage instructions, workflow instructions for Camera Operator and Director, related assets (Order Attachments, Brand Assets, Scriptwriting Assets, Upload), and external links. A right rail hosts the Primary Delivery Chat and Service Specific Chats with a "Create a new chat" button.

Role

Head of UX & Design. Owned product direction, brand evolution, and the design system foundation. Led 5 designers and partnered with 30+ engineers across a global team.

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