At bitcrowd, we’re passionate about working with teams that drive meaningful change in the digital world. That’s why we’re super excited to collaborate with Steady, a platform that helps independent publishers build sustainable income through memberships. From journalists to podcasters, thousands of creators use Steady to connect with their audiences and fund their work.

To keep helping creators thrive, Steady is evolving. One big step in this journey? A redesign of the Media Maker backend—the place where creators manage their content, memberships, and subscriber insights. Our mission: to make it more intuitive, efficient, and scalable for the future.

Building a Smoother Experience for Creators

Steady’s mission is all about giving independent media makers better funding options. After seven years of organic growth, the Media Maker backend had become increasingly complex. New features had been added without a unified approach, leading to various challenges:

• Navigational Challenges – As more features and settings were added, it got harder for creators to find what they needed.
• Limited Flexibility – The existing structure limited the ability to introduce new features efficiently.
• Steep Learning Curve – The system wasn’t as intuitive as it could have been, making it tricky for both new creators and developers to get the hang of it.

With this redesign, we're not just improving the experience for users, but also setting things up for a more flexible and faster development process in the future. The goal is to build something that can grow with Steady and help creators manage their content and memberships with ease.

🎨 Giving the UI and UX a Fresh Look

One aspect of the redesign is modernizing the user interface and improving the user experience. This includes updating the navigation structure to ensure that creators can easily access the features they rely on. We want to create a clean, straightforward layout that gives users confidence when navigating the platform.

We also aim to bring consistency across the entire Steady platform, including both the Media Maker backend and member-facing components. Together with the people at Steady, we’re developing a new design system and a styleguide ready to be used within all of their digital products. By streamlining design elements across all of Steady, we will create a seamless experience where everything from buttons to forms feels familiar, intuitive, and responsive.

💅 Improving the Code for the Long Run

Along with the visual updates, we're making some important changes under the hood to make the platform more adaptable and maintainable. One of the key changes is introducing a central component library. This will unify shared styles, design tokens, and components across the platform, making development faster and more consistent.

Here’s how this helps:

• Faster Development – With reusable components and styles, updates will be quicker and easier to roll out.
• Consistency Across the Platform – By standardizing components, we can ensure everything feels cohesive—whether you’re using Steady as a member or a creator.
• Ready for the Future – With a solid foundation, Steady will be able to evolve more easily as new features are introduced.

⚙️ Focusing on Functional Changes

While a big part of the redesign is about making things look better, we're also adding some functional improvements. These include reorganizing features and updating the navigation structure so everything flows more logically. We’re approaching this step-by-step to make sure the transition is smooth for current users while leaving room for future updates.

🔮 What’s Next?

We’re excited to be part of this journey and look forward to seeing how the redesign will further empower creators. By making the platform more intuitive, adaptable, and performant, Steady will continue to play a crucial role in supporting independent media. As we move forward, we’re committed to staying in close collaboration with Steady’s team to ensure the redesign aligns with the needs of creators and the ever-changing landscape of digital publishing.

Stay tuned for updates as the redesign takes shape—we can’t wait to share more of the process with you!