boohma

Lead the Design of a best-in-class out of home media planning SaaS product.

Requirements

billups was in a startup mode and had built an internal team to create the best out of home media planning tool available. Not only would billups use this tool internally but also release it as a SaaS product in the wild. The company had internal challenges around converting from an engineering led team to an organization that wanted to make UX a priority and priorittize design in all aspects of the work. With an amazingly talented data-science team, billups had the data buttoned up, the engineering teams had created a pilot beta which needed a complete overhaul on the front-end. I was hired as the UX Director to help bring this vision to market with a heavy task, help change the culture and create a product that had to perform flawlessly and provide an extensive set of tools for media buyers to work with clients on their advertising and media planning.

Findings/Research

I helped put together a small team of UX designers and quickly got to work onboarding into the world of OOH. I learned how billups media planners did their job, learned about relationships with clients, vendors and services. I deep dove into OOH media formats, studied media plans, looked at global data and metrics and learned how, combined with things like traffic patterns, marketing demo profiles and data, the science of media could be visualized. I researched competitive offerings, in and out of the segment, and also performed interviews with stakeholders, industry leaders, media buyers, and vendors. This would be a complex platform that required a robust toolset; think API calls, massive data tables, real-time traffic data, real-time censor data, real-time global stats and status of billboards, bus stop benches, digital kiosks and more. Oh my. All in a nice tidy tool that looks beautiful, performs flawlessly and makes users work lives better.

Design

As the UX Director, I led the team to begin compiling all the documentation generated and created navigation architecture, personas and user flows. We started to breakdown the toolsets into various categories like; map controls, vendor placements, client tools, invoice fields and facings icons. We simultaneously started looking at maps. Lot’s of maps in fact, how other companies are using maps and data. The team iterated on a map design since that was a huge part of this software and one of the most important aspects. I worked on the look and feel, mood boards and color palette for the app while also working with the branding team on the mark, typography and tone of voice where I wrote most of the instructional copy, (unfortunately, due to NDA and company intellectual property, I don’t have any copies of this work).

I wanted the software to feel profesional but laced with humor and personality. I also wanted to create a UI that wouldn’t fatigue the eyes when having to use it all day at work. I implemented a lean process circumventing doing wireframes and instead I built a library of sketch symbols as myself and the team created screens. This allowed us to pivot quickly on colors, layouts, field sets, navigation and more across a breadth of implementations.

I worked closely with engineering and developed principles, offered UX training, and slowly started to change the way the company worked and built products. We worked in design sprints 2 weeks behind engineering and constantly iterated as we drew closer to release and provided revised screens, bugs, enhancements and detailed UI measurements.

Results

After nearly a year with the company, helping change the culture, and leading design on a beautiful product, I was able to help lay the groundwork for what would become a very successful initiative. I was thrilled to continue to follow the development of the platform after I left as my brother took over the director position and worked at the company for years taking the work to a whole new level!