Alex Hewitt
/
ux designer
Media campaigns (planning and buying).
Jamaica’s top full service ad agency, helping customers plan, create and deliver multi-media campaigns, required a custom planning tool to automate and streamline their main processes. An all-encompassing platform for the entire team aims to replace their over-reliance on spreadsheets.
Problem definition, userflows, wireframes, design research and visual design.
Approximately 10 months
Media strategy (planning & buying) is tediously managed by a myriad of tools which all seem to lack the finer details and features required by the client to maximise efficiency.
Provide a specialised tool that fully encapsulates the workflow from start to finish, allowing multiple team members to progress media campaigns while maintaining established mental models.
I was responsible for curating personas and outlining user types based on previously collected research. I also contributed to early sketches and userflows, helping to establish the core process of setting up a media campaign. I assisted in setting the visual direction and theming, and contributed to the final design for a number of key components.
My most notable contribution was leading the UI design for the application’s settings and configurations pages, where users could manage the statistical and demographics data available for campaign planning.
The existing planning tool has the features that closely matched client needs, but the team still opted to return to their former process of using various spreadsheets and other tools. What's preventing adoption?
Communication with vendors, customers and the media team showed better engagement with their customised spreadsheet presentations.
Spreadsheets allowed the team to have greater flexibility in presenting plans for various media types using regional demographic data.
The tool in use was unable to present the results of planning in the required formats. Alternative products also lacked the ability to customise out of the box.
Media campaigns can be broken down into 4 main phases, outlined below, where each is broken down into a series of sub-tasks. This process is undertaken by 2 main personnel types; Media Planners and Media Buyers.
Our primary user types play an important part in taking media campaigns from ideas to marketing success.
Responsible for engaging customers directly to map out marketing objectives.
Engages media vendors to secure advertising spots based on objectives.
Too many docs and tools required
All required data has to be assembled separately
Choosing campaign media types lacks detailed visibility
Each media type requires a spreadsheet
Checking cell formulas for accuracy adds time
Data may not always be up to date
Unable to generate comprehensive data graphs automatically
Media rates can change unknowingly
Constantly checking with vendors is tedious
Unable to generate media schedules automatically
Customers don’t respond well to MS Excel graphs
Communicating efficacy of media plan is a challenge
Budget negotiations are hampered by limited graphics
Prefers reviewing plan as a spreadsheet
Confirming air-times is tedious
Invoicing clients based on vendor rates requires double-work
Client communication is critical, they need to see that their investment will yield results.
34 y/o
|
Media Planner
Goal-oriented
Idealist
Empathetic
Thorough
Setup objective-based campaigns
Monitor campaign impact
Manage customer spending
Facilitate strong collaboration
Repetitive manual tasks
Using multiple applications
Assembling and sharing plan is tedious
Vendor rates can be pretty dynamic so it's essential we're always on-top of it.
27 y/o
|
Media Buyer
Flexible
By-the-numbers
Task-oriented
Timely
Results-driven
Cautious
Easily confirm ad spots with vendors
Adjust media schedule based on availability
Efficiently updating sudden rates changes
Tracking agreed terms
Invoicing customers for various vendors
Limited collaboration abilities
Limited tool portability
The inability to upload regional demographic data with the current tool, Clients & Profits, hindered the client's ability to effectively communicate to customers how a campaign would meet marketing objectives. Additionally, the aesthetics did not inspire the team to commit to said tool, despite the strong feature set.
Most competing products offered a similar suite of features, the unique pros and cons of each are listed below.
Given the fact that the current tools at the client’s disposal meet most of their needs, the strategy for designing our custom tool came down to how we would retain what they know and love, while adding the critical features to ensure product adoption.
Allow data to be accessed efficiently in the application
View previous plans as a summary
Link to different sections of the media plan
Allow users to quickly access their audience while maintaining context
Let users share their spot selections with customers from the application
Provide visualisations to help comprehend costs and highlight overtures
Allow the relevant data to be available to all team members when needed.
Create a guided, intuitive process flow
Provide structured layouts for all media types
Provide experiences that match their existing mental models.
Match their workflow as closely as possible while reducing existing frustrations.
The primary intent is to help users maintain context. The aim is to guide the user through campaign setup, which then becomes a hub for analysing selections from the main planning space and determining the impact of the campaign.
The initiation point for each campaign, the "Launchpad" allows users to add contacts, analyse market data and set budgets. Media selections made here populate the main work space and enables the selection of vendors for the different ad mediums.
The main work space designed separately as two pieces; the "Media Palette", allowing users to select a program, generating a row on the canvas that could be populated with advertising spots, and the "Media Canvas", meant to retain the familiarity of spreadsheets.
The "Blocking Chart" is overlooked by the "Media Planning Bar". The ability to swap between the schedule and Blocking Chart with the same advertising spot selections speeds up the planning phase, allowing a Media Buyer to clearly state when an advertising spot is unavailable.
The Launchpad guides users through campaign setup and then becomes a hub for analysing selections from the Blocking Chart. It all works together to easily convey the impact of a campaign based on objectives and budgets.
Every selection made has a visual impact that can be easily communicated to customers. When planning is complete, Media Buyers can quickly share selected advertising spots with vendors.
Comprehensive reports are now easily produced and shared with clients and team members, providing the justifications for media strategies.
Maintaining contact lists, managing vendor rates, building customer-base and managing demographic data; everything required to justify a bespoke solution and provide the ultimate platform.
The solution outlined closely matches the stakeholder's unique workflows. The features selected for development provide value to the Media Planners when trying to estimate the impact of a campaign and present findings to customers. This was achieved by adding the demographic data directly into the application with the ability to adjust parameters, see visual updates live, and export graphs.
Design sprints proved to be highly effective at quickly advancing our domain knowledge and ideations. We were also successful at translating the complexity of media planning & buying to a streamlined, familiar process with effective information architecture
While it was, and always is, our aim to prioritise user needs above all else, stakeholders were, at times, reluctant to move the project forward due to concerns that their specific wants and needs weren’t being addressed. In the process however, we lost touch with end-user needs.
When working with this level of complexity and balancing a number of hard-line requirements, it’s crucial to employ means of frequent testing and validation.
The number one priority is the user, but solutions can't get to users without stakeholder approval; we needed to foster an environment in which stakeholders were more appreciative of the user's needs in conjunction with their own objectives.
