Every day, millions of the (at the time) 110 million+ users of Academia.edu would visit the "Single Work Page" - the page where you view, read, download, or save a paper. At the conception of the site, the url would be shared via email or another methods.

However, as our team had developed a proven recommendation algorithm, we wanted to look for opportunities to highlight paper --> paper connections on site. We started with the Single Work Page.

The new designs led to a 141% increase in total on-site engagement, and a 30% lift on downloads. Additionally, the new page framework enabled new reader focused tools, leading to additional millions in revenue.

We ran experiments on 5 different versions of the page, testing with interactive webflow prototypes. Each of our prototypes tested a different thesis of what would make this page valuable - e.g. connectedness to other papers, immediacy, topic relationships, etc… - and leaned into it within the design. For example, the design below is our earliest iteration of the paper-relational thesis, which added significant emphasis to the right-hand pane, which held related papers.

The bulk of our directions flopped during resonance testing, but all we needed was one - and we got it with the above design. We doubled down on this paper relationship in future design work as well - see Premium Reader Tools.