DUANE - ADVOCATE
There were about 55 advocates that used a multitude of tools that were single serving and fragmented.
Working at CDK I was able to build experience through a multitude of projects focused on redesigning the inhouse advertising tools. The Digital Advertising Platform (DAP) was created in order to deliver automotive search and display advertisements across different search engines (Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Bing) and help the in house agency to optimize those ads for the auto dealers that were their clients.
By being the first team to introduce, customize and facilitate Design Sprints wihtin the design organization, I was able to help cut design times by up to 60% and pushed the team to maximize efficiency, collaborate and ultimatley raise product standards.
Onward!The project was to redesign the UX architecture and interface of a fragmented complex Digital Advertising toolset (100+ tools) into a single modern shippable product. Throughout it's duration I supported 5 development teams (2 in India) across internal and consumer facing products. The entire initiative had a net benefit total of $1.4 million.
One great benefit of working on internal tools is how easy it is to get valid user feedback and insights. I often, if not daily, was able to run new ideas by users, schedule a quick contextual interview, or get instant feedback on any release we had. Needless to say, I was able to stay close to the users and make sure their needs were addressed. Through this constant contact we were able to develop two personas that would be present during any conversation an actual user wasn't present. These helped to keep the team focused and empathetic.
The users had an increasingly large backlog of daily tasks due to system slowness, archaic fragmented workflows and clients demanding facetime that took them away from their tedious manual duties.
The users needed a single tool that would reduce manual tasks and allow them more facetime with clients. The tool needed to alert them of at risk accounts that may be underperforming and causing client churn. It needed to comprehensive enough to remove the necessity of spending time in other tools like Google AdWords, Facebook Ads etc. It must serve as a single source of truth for all ad outputs.
By introducing the Design Sprint process, design handoffs were reduced by 60%. The agency reported accomplishing workflow tasks in approximately half the time.
The entire initiative had a net benefit total of $1.4 million. Of the $1.4 million, the advertising team projected that $950k in production hours saved alone from the redesign.
I presented the results of our new process in a design lunch and learn which increased transparency in the org and received enough positive feedback to host more.