Project
Adphorus is a travel marketing science company that provides travel brands around the globe with the tools and the know-how to scale their revenues through a scientific approach to travel advertising on Facebook and Instagram.
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Adphorus Creative Designer is an intuitive design tool that offers users a range of options to customize their images and create more engaging ads for both static and dynamic images.
My Role
As the first and only UX Designer in Adphorus, I was part of the product team and was responsible for the experience strategy and design of the new product. I led the UX & UI work, producing all deliverables and presenting these to stakeholders and the rest of the team. I worked alongside a Product Manager, Product Marketing Manager, Product Analyst, UI Designer, Icon Designer and Web Developers.
Brief
While building up their ads to publish on Facebook and Instagram, users spend a lot of time creating hundreds of visuals from their product catalog that has the same layout. With the existing solution, creating ads was a very repetitive task, consuming a lot of time and resources. The main purpose of the project was to design a solution that will allow users to apply a creative template to all visuals in the easiest, most efficient, and fastest way.
Challanges
The main challenge of the project was there was no detailed product spec to start with. The scope was very wide, with many possible design solutions, as we could be considering integration with a design tool, hiring a designer for creating all those templates manually or offering a product that automatically creates hundreds of templates according to the rules set by users.
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Also, we only had 5 sprints to create the best solution.
User Research
User Interviews
Quantitative Data Collection
We had user interview sessions with our major clients to gather insights and suggestions for the ad-creating process. All the qualitative data collected is documented, categorized, and turned into meaningful insights.
We watched over 100 sessions of the ad creation process via FullStory, validated user feedback, and estimated the average duration for creating a single ad.
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Also, our Product Analyst estimated the average number of creatives that users have in their product catalogs, to give us information on the total time spent on ads for a single campaign.
120
Users
480
Average Number
Of Creatives
2min
Average Time For
Creating Creatives
Total Time Spent
Per User
24h
Job Story
After collecting user data & insights, we wanted to define the main problems that users are facing. By using Jobs To Be Done framework, we were able to define the underlying reasons for user problems without getting stuck on the technical restrictions and brought a wider perspective of solutions.
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Our Job story was defined after our JTBD sessions as:
When I publish multiple ads on Facebook, I want to have only a creative to create hundreds of them without spending excessive time on my visuals and getting rid of the repetitive work.
Job Story led us to design a simple tool, which allows users to create their templates for visuals even without the need of a designer, and apply templates to an infinite number of creatives just in a few minutes.
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Next, we redefined which users will be the target persona for this new product.
Digital Marketing Specialists
No design tool knwoledge
Daily presentation tools usage such as Keynote & PPTX
Designers
Advanced level of knowledge on many creative tools
In other words, we needed a product that could be used easily by users who do not have any know-how on creatives tools but also supports designers with advanced features to design visuals within the tool itself.
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Benchmark Analysis &
Competitive Research
As we decided to design a creative tool, we took a step back and detailed the research by conducting competitive research and benchmark analysis. Many creative tools were analyzed, and their features were listed and categorized. Next, we determined the functionalities needed for out new creative tool both for basic & advanced usage.
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We examined each tool by the following aspects:
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Fidelity
Design Features
Profesional Skill Requirement
Sharing
Purpose of Usage
Learning Curve
A snapshot of the analysis
User Scenarios & User Flows
In order to clarify functionalities, user scenarios were defined for both basic and advanced usage. As one of the main challenges was creating a very easy-to-learn tool, we highly focused on the basic usage scenarios. 35 basic and 20 advanced usage scenarios were generated.
Below, an example of basic usage scenarios can be seen.
By detailing the functionalities, a content inventory was created. Open card sorting sessions prepared and moderated by myself were conducted with 35 users, asking them to categorize the items given. They are also asked to name all the categories they created. Session results were documented and analyzed by using OptimalSort.
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The results of the card sorting sessions guided us to finalize the information architecture and move to the next step, which was wireframing.
UI Design
After wireframe review sessions with each team, I finalized wireframes, defined major interactions, and delivered the outputs to UI Designer. I prepared a visual inspiration document for the look & feel of the tool to guide the designer. After the UI check, and review meetings the interface was completed and tested by our team and selected users.
User Testing
After the release of the MVP, we tested our users and measured the pain points such as the average time for creating a single creative or the total time spent on creating ads, and compared the result to the initial numbers we collected.
Without Creative Designer
Users
120
2min
Average Time For
Creating Creatives
480
Average Number
Of Creatives
Total Time Spent
Per User
24h
Users
120
2min
Average Time For
Creating Creatives
480
Average Number
Of Creatives
Total Time Spent
Per User
16min
With Creative Designer
CONCLUSION
Having a very wide perspective by using the JBTD methodology, we created a tool that solved a major efficiency and effectiveness problem for our users. By using Creative Designer, our users started having more creatives in their product catalog spending only a few minutes instead of hours for creating them one by one. If an advanced design is needed design professionals are also able to create pixel-perfect designs with the same tool.
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Creative Designer is loved by all of our clients, our business partner Facebook and recently is being developed as a plug-in for clients that are not using our platform as a new business model.