How to “Lie Down and Win” in Product Design: Insights from Rental Live‑Streaming

Lie Winning

2020 was an unforgettable year. The outbreak at the beginning of the year brought sudden, massive changes to society. Many offline industries faced unprecedented problems: logistics stalled, foot traffic plummeted, and production halted. Residents' lifestyles also changed dramatically, with work and school suspended and social contact becoming very cautious.

Online migration of offline scenarios created new possibilities during the disaster. Online education, online meetings, online grocery shopping—people could safely and efficiently complete almost all social activities that were previously offline.

The rental‑housing scenario was similar. Renting usually requires visiting multiple houses, meeting many people face‑to‑face, and signing contracts in person, which increased infection risk and made control difficult. Live‑streamed house tours introduced a new possibility for renting during the pandemic.

In February we immediately relaunched the rental‑live‑streaming business. The live‑stream team responded quickly, and over more than half a year we broke the historical peak of rental live streams, continuing to surge. After the epidemic stabilized, the project’s sessions grew 15‑fold, providing safer, more efficient online house‑viewing services to millions of landlords and tenants.

From a macro perspective, I rode the wave and won without doing any design, still achieving good performance growth.

But on closer inspection, I realized that “lying‑down‑to‑win” is a discipline.

First, some data (the exact numbers are omitted for sensitivity, only the trend is shown). When we restarted the live‑streaming business at the end of February, the sessions were actually less than one‑third of the peak two years earlier. After two months of effort, we finally broke the previous record.

After the epidemic stabilized, overall traffic for real‑estate declined, and our live‑streaming sessions dipped slightly, but we still achieved逆势增长 (counter‑trend growth). The daily peak reached 4.2 times the pre‑2020 maximum. Within the group, rental live streams accounted for 80 % of the total live‑stream sessions across all business lines.

How to Lie Winning

1. Do the Right Thing at the Right Time

Designers are mostly idealists, full of creativity and meticulousness. A core trait of a designer is the craftsman spirit—pursuing excellence and deeply empathizing with users.

When I first took over the live‑stream project, I found many design problems in the old version: excessive colors, outdated visual style, lack of detail, unreasonable operation segregation, unclear hierarchy, weak interaction, and a dull atmosphere.

However, this time I calmly “lay down” – just follow the requirements and do the work, without any extra design exploration or pushing for experience improvements.

Of course, laying down comfortably requires an important premise: your product is doing the right thing.

In Q1, with limited development resources, we designed and launched 34 live‑stream requirements in two months, covering personal, broker, brand‑apartment, Anju Ke, and PMS multi‑platform live‑viewing functions. The daily live‑stream peak far exceeded the historical peak.

One scenario we covered was: what if the experience were more comfortable? Perhaps by mid‑year we would still have only a few live‑stream sessions per day, landlords could not find our live‑stream feature, tenants could not see the houses they wanted, and even a great live‑stream experience would bring limited effect.

Times change quickly; doing the right thing at the right time can be more important than showcasing a designer’s skill and drive. When it’s time to lie down, do so; the internet is not a lone idealist’s romance, it’s a group’s romance.

2. Go with the Flow, Make Design Easier

If a product’s solution is like a magic pill that works instantly, design work often feels more like mineral water that sustains life. Therefore, designers often have to reason with product managers, much like urging a seriously ill person to drink more water.

Designers need to use clever tactics to push projects forward while “lying down.” When giving medicine to a patient, if you can also make them drink water, the task becomes easier. The prerequisite is close information sync with product, so you can seize the “water‑delivery” timing.

When I learned that rental live‑streaming had achieved full capability coverage in Q1, I prepared to continuously improve the live‑stream capabilities: sharing, blacklist, interest tags, comments, micro‑chat integration, etc. I knew the moment to push visual redesign had arrived:

Experience optimization will become important in the next stage;

Dense functional changes will appear on the same page;

This page offers the greatest potential for design quality improvement (although we didn’t push design in Q1, we had previously organized design issues).

Without much discussion, I posted a concept draft of the new live‑stream room to the group, instantly gaining colleague and manager approval, and the visual redesign proceeded smoothly.

Q2 results were also impressive: the live‑stream room was fully upgraded, live stability improved beyond historical peaks, interaction rates rose, and link clicks increased 30‑fold.

Every product iteration offers many opportunities to “lie down” and push design. Understanding online product design problems, maintaining good communication with product, and seizing each opportunity to take over design is the key.

3. Keep Shining Where No One Looks

The core of “lying‑down‑to‑win” is not the “lying” itself but knowing how to “win.” Designers often do not spend pages in performance reviews explaining how they communicated project ideas with product.

My experience suggests:

Maintain a habit of frequent communication; if the product manager communicates well, consider it a blessing; if not, fight for it yourself;

Clarify the key points of experience improvement and how they relate to core product metrics;

Understand the product and leadership’s perspectives, then synthesize and output your own view;

Continuously monitor post‑launch metrics with product and think of solutions together;

Try to embed experience metrics into product metrics.

When excellent product managers fully absorb designers’ ideas and together envision a better future, the distance to “lying‑down‑to‑win” shrinks.

During the rental‑live‑streaming iteration, product and designers discussed extensively, eventually finding more and better live‑stream entry points, enabling more people to use and watch live streams. Subtle experience improvements helped hosts deliver higher‑quality streams, maintaining effective live‑stream rates even with a large number of hosts, and gave viewers a better experience and more willingness to interact.

4. When Important Content Is Ignored, Stand Up

Design experience and product‑focused data often have a large gap. Using rental live‑streaming as an example:

Product may consider a live stream “effective” if someone watches it (the act of streaming). Design experience cares about whether users perceive the live stream as effective—whether they receive enough feedback and connection.

Product looks at replay rate for ROI: whether a two‑week rental cycle justifies guiding replay. Design experience cares about replay rate because it is a clear feedback indicator of the live‑stream experience.

Product focuses on audience traffic; design experience focuses on whether the audience gets what they need immediately and whether they gain enough value during the stream, balancing the effort of hosts who stream for 5‑10 minutes.

5. Embrace Your “Good Luck”

All the above is subjective, but “lying‑down‑to‑win” inevitably needs “good luck.” When the right timing arrives, don’t just lie still—embrace it and maximize the opportunity.

“Heavenly timing and geographical advantage” are important luck factors. When the moment belongs to you, seize it.

“Human harmony” is an even more controllable luck factor. The success of the rental‑live‑streaming project is closely linked to a responsible PM team, highly capable front‑ and back‑end engineers, professional interaction researchers, and wise decision‑makers behind the scenes.

Without them, I could not have written this content.

Conclusion

Winning gracefully is ideal, but if you lack that condition, designers still need to leap like a carp—either sprint‑win or kneel‑win. The posture doesn’t matter as much as knowing how to win.

Finally, I wish everyone can “lie‑down‑win” on the road of design and in life.