Valeriia S. Portfolio

Initiated and led a New Year project in the Yandex Search Reviews user account, delivering a personalized year-in-review experience showcasing users' activity and achievements throughout 2025.

The experience was intentionally designed to conclude with a playful, celebratory message inspired by humorous reviews from Yandex Reviews.

Together with the team, we selected the funniest standout reviews and turned them into 21 unique greetings, randomly shown to users at the final step.

Insights highlighted each user’s contribution and impact, reinforcing the value of their voice and encouraging sharing. I complemented them with AI-generated visuals that established a cohesive, festive visual language and elevated the experience.

The experience was accessible via push notification and a prominent entry point in the user account, ensuring discoverability beyond push delivery.

By the end of the project, we had created a reusable template and a clear launch mechanism that the team can build on for future seasonal moments.

Key outcomes included a 2–3× uplift in notification CTR, reaching ~10% (compared to a 3–5% average), and an 11% in-product share rate (excluding screenshots).

After preparing early prototypes and references from other Yandex services, I pitched the concept to the Product Owner and secured approval to move forward.(which was extremely exciting!)

Some Yandex services regularly launch festive New Year specials, such as Yandex 360’s Novogodnevo project^[*]or Yandex Music’s Year Wrapped.

11%

in-product share rate

2–3×

uplift in notification CTR

Lightweight Year-in-Review Experience

Seeing this, I identified an opportunity to introduce a similar celebratory moment to Yandex Reviews — a product not typically perceived as emotional or engaging.

To ensure visual quality across devices, I worked closely with a front-end engineer to define optimal image dimensions and layout positioning.

Together, we added a subtle touch of magic — a falling snow animation — to enhance the festive feel.

Instead of building a fully dynamic, code-based experience, we chose a primarily image-based implementation and focused on a mobile-only experience to ensure we could ship on time.

Design & Engineering Collaboration

The timeline was tight, and this was a format our team hadn’t worked with before, so we had to make several trade-offs.

Equally important was strengthening long-term user loyalty and trust. Since Reviews are built around people and their opinions, fostering trust means helping contributors feel recognized, valued, and confident that their voice matters.

Big thanks to the team for the energy and commitment they brought to this project

This experience was designed to increase engagement, create a natural trigger for social sharing, and potentially attract new users.

Your year wrapped in Yandex Reviews

Insight & Visual Direction

outcomes

Inspiration
& Initiative

Designing Within Constraints

Opportunity

(01) ABOUT
THE PROJECT