Client
Parship Meet Group
Project type
Application Revenue Stream
Discipline
Animation
Product Technical Development
Interactivity
QA Tester
Project Manager
Role
Senior Motion Designer
and Technical Lead
Overview
Across The Parship Meet Group’s family of apps, advertising was once the company’s primary revenue source. With the introduction of video live streaming, however, new opportunities emerged, including Gifting: a virtual tipping system that allowed users to send animated gifts to streamers, each representing real-world value. At its launch, Gifting was innovative but underdeveloped. While it used the Lottie animation library, it didn’t yet push the technology to its full creative or technical potential.
The challenge was clear:
How could we expand Gifting to increase user engagement, emotional connection, and spending, while redefining what animation could do in a live streaming environment?
Over my seven years with The Parship Meet Group, I set out to evolve Gifting from a simple visual novelty into a dynamic, interactive storytelling experience one that would become the cornerstone of user monetization across our platform.
Goals
• Elevate Gifting with complex, emotionally resonant animation experiences that leverage Lottie to its highest capability
• Deliver fresh, innovative concepts that deepen user engagement and inspire participation
• Establish comprehensive documentation and motion guidelines for scalable, consistent implementation
• Build and mentor a team of animators to expand and refine the Gifting library
• Lay the groundwork to transition from Lottie to Rive, introducing the next generation of interactive motion design
Challenges
• No internal documentation or prior standards for how Lottie was integrated into the apps
• Performance needed to be consistent across devices and operating systems with varying hardware capabilities
• Lottie’s limitations required deep technical understanding and creative problem-solving to overcome
• Team development required both mentorship and the creation of an internal production pipeline to streamline collaboration
"Rain of Red Roses"
Research and Best Practices
Tipping itself wasn’t new but using animated gifts to represent value was an emerging concept in the streaming world. Few competitors (especially in Western markets) were experimenting at the same scale.
Before innovation could begin, we needed mastery of our tools. I conducted a deep exploration of Lottie’s architecture, constraints, and best-use practices, leading to the creation of the Lottie Animation Guide; a foundational document that standardized animation implementation across all apps and operating systems.
This guide enabled the team to push the boundaries of what Lottie could achieve while maintaining performance and visual consistency. With a foundation in place, we began reimagining Gifting as more than an animation as an experience.
Becoming Something More
Gifting wasn’t just about tipping. It was about creating connection, excitement, and storytelling moments between streamers and viewers.
I saw the potential for Gifting to:
• Drive conversation and garner increased attention
• Reward engagement through visually rich, interactive moments
• Encourage repeat participation through delight and surprise
Our mission became clear: turn every gift into a mini story, something that made both sender and receiver part of a shared event worth talking about.
Complex Animations; Pushing the Limits
Before my involvement, Gifting animations were simple, typically a light effect, confetti burst, or a “rain of roses” falling down the screen. They were charming but limited. Meanwhile, our competitors stayed in the same lane: even their longer animations were essentially simple looping visuals, regardless of how much a user spent.
We could do more.
I introduced tiered animation durations linked to value of the tip:
• 5-second gifts for smaller tips: short, satisfying bursts of animation
• 15-second and higher-tier gifts: elaborate, cinematic stories that generated intrigue and wonder
• 15-second+ gifts: the rarest of gifts, only rewarded during special events and through low percentage chance
This structure created a natural rarity system. Some gifts became highly anticipated events, celebrated by viewers and streamers alike. When a rare gift appeared, chat would explode meaning the animation itself was now a form of content. This was not simple to implement for three reasons:
• Lottie has strict technical limitations on what it can and cannot render, requiring careful design decisions
• Because Lottie was still relatively new, most incoming animators had no prior experience with the format, requiring direct training and guidance
• All animations needed to load instantly on the client side but if a JSON file became too large (a common risk with Lottie), it could cause the app to stutter or crash
To overcome these limitations, I developed an implementation workflow and standards framework in line with the kinds of storied animations we wanted to create. I spent the next three months onboarding animators to design for Lottie, building fluency with the platform & providing solutions when issues arose.
Within months, our team evolved the gifting library from basic loops to short, emotionally engaging stories that drove user engagement really got people talking!
"Battle Dragon Wheel" by Nicole McDonald
Wheels
In 2019, Director of Product Sean Lawrence approached me with a “hackathon-style” question:
Could we create an animation that acted like a prize wheel allowing streamers to earn high-value gifts from small investments?
Collaborating closely with development, we brought that concept to life as the Wheels Category of Gifting. This new system introduced a gacha-style game mechanic, offering:
• The thrill of high-value gift wins from modest contributions
• Exclusive debuts of new, premium gifts.
• Elevated excitement and engagement in live streams.
The “Wheels” category quickly became a flagship feature within the Gifting experience, blending motion design, gamification, and emotional reward.
Exploring the Future with Rive
Lottie had taken Gifting farther than anyone expected; its lightweight, expressive animation format helped transform the platform and proved tremendously successful. But as we continued to innovate, its limitations became clear. Lottie was no longer actively developed, relying instead on third-party support, with no new features or technical advancements on the horizon.
To evolve the experience further, we needed a modern animation system that could grow with us.
Enter Rive; an interactive design platform with a modern state machine system, multi-platform runtime, and high-performance vector rendering.
With Rive, a fully supported, actively developed platform, we could take Gifting to the next level by introducing something never before seen in a streaming tip system:
True Interactivity.
Animations could now respond to user input in real time – including:
• The creation of dynamic, participatory motion experiences instead of passive visuals
• Dynamic state transitions controlled by backend events (e.g., user roles such as streamer, viewer, gifter)
• Real-time personalization, pulling data like profile images and usernames directly into animations without having to tap developers when changes were needed to the data being pulled
Working alongside engineering, I helped design the architecture for the most advanced interactive gifting system ever built for a streaming platform, setting a new benchmark for the industry.
"Sleeping Kitty" animation by Brian Martin
State Machine and Transition Logic implementation by Karen Nowakowski
The Result?
User Pay now accounts for 64% of total revenue.
Since Gifting’s inception in 2018, The Parship Meet Group’s revenue transformed dramatically from ad-driven to user-driven without reducing advertising income.
Within the first year:
• Annualized run rate approached $50 million
• 45% increase in ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)
• Rapid growth in user retention and spending behavior
As of 2025, Gifting contributes:
• 64% of total global revenue
• 82% of revenue within U.S.-based apps
This success stands as proof of how motion design can directly influence business growth transforming animation from a visual enhancement into a core driver of engagement, emotion, and revenue.
