Timeline
‍3 months

Tools
‍Rhino, Illustrator, Woodshop, Pen & Paper, Kitchen

Methodologies
‍Rapid prototyping, usability testing, iterative models

Role
‍Architect/Product Designer

Recovering lost ad revenue for digital publishers.

Digital publishers lose more than $15.8B in revenue in 2019 due to adblockers, an increase of almost half the $11B lost in 2016, (OnAudience). Yet while over 25% of users in the US use an adblocker, 76% of users also agree that publishers have the right to earn revenue from published content.

The Client

Admiral is a SaaS platform that focuses on Visitor Relationship Management –– creating relationships between publishers and their visitors to encourage them to pay for the content through: ad blocking, consent products (GDPR, CCPA) and/or subscriptions.

The Task

Redesign the onboarding experience as well as create a master dashboard to increase user engagement and upsell new potential users.

Timeline
‍4 weeks

Tools
‍‍Figma, InVision, Pen and Paper

Methodologies
‍‍UX Research, Strategy, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing

Platform
Desktop

Jump to solution

Recovering lost ad revenue for digital publishers.

Our Client

Our Task

Redesign the onboarding experience as well as create a master dashboard to increase user engagement and upsell new potential users.

Jump to Solution

Evaluating the competition

The clients were well aware of their competitors, but had done little research as to what their strengths and weaknesses were. In order to supplement our standard market competitive analysis, we conducted a visual competitive analysis of dashboards and onboarding.

The goal was to help us evaluate the current state of Admiral’s platform, while paying special attention to what metrics were shown and how they were organized.
‍

Speaking to Employees

In order to validate our assumptions, we spoke to the employees that directly deal with the clients and the dashboard –– head of sales, the head of customer support, and even had the opportunity to speak to the CEO.

Were there any pain points from the company’s side that would impact the client experience?

“5% of our users make up 95% of our usage. We want to improve that.”

-Dan Rua, CEO Admiral

Admiral's Goals for the Client Experience

Based on employee interviews and business goals, these were the top priorities.

Straightforward

Present information in an easily digestible, but polished manner

Human-Centric

Users are more than just statistics––retain a human touch to provide an engaging and approachable product.

Self-Guiding

Provide users with the confidence to adopt the platform into their workflow with minimal external support

Speaking to Clients

How aware were they about the platform’s full capabilities?

What was their motivation, if any, for using the dashboard?

“The platform is very accessible because I can email Bryan (customer support)”

-Kip, OMSFT

Speaking to Clients

Admiral’s energy is currently targeted towards bringing in clients––but once the clients were sold and had to use the tools: ‍

How aware were they about the platform’s full capabilities?

What was their motivation, if any, for using the dashboard?

“The platform is very accessible because I can email Bryan (customer support)”

-Kip, OMSFT

Our Findings

01 The dashboard is currently a middleman.

4 out of 5 users spend minimal time logging into the platform, and when they do it’s primarily to export data to other platforms.

02 Admiral is not conveying their value

Due to lack of visibility about other products, users all thought they had a full picture of Admiral’s capabilities, when it was just the products they use.

03 The current platform is not straightforward.

Users found the site walkthrough that the Admiral team provides to be helpful, however, they felt that it would be difficult to understand the platform without this walkthrough.

04 Customer support is Admiral’s primary appeal.

The majority of users were perfectly content with Admiral as a platform, but this was only because customer support was their eyes and ears.

Key User Patterns

5 out of 5 users

relied on customer support for problems

4 out of 5 users

inherited the platform from a predecessor and had to learn it through a second round w/ customer support

1 out of 5 users

knew about Admiral’s other products

5 out of 5 users

thought they knew what Admiral does*

*when probed further, it was clear this was not the case––their knowledge was limited to only the products they were using

Customer User Flow

Marketing and attracting clients was not Admiral’s problem––it was the product experience. If Admiral’s goal is to convey their value through the platform, while upselling products, how does a client get there?

Accounting for both the user and the company’s perspectives, we visually mapped out a client user flow from their first interaction with Admiral sales or their website, to becoming a potential best friend (using all three products).
‍

Customer Love was a multi-touchpoint for a client to reach the final stage.

Admiral assumed that the mid-tier clients were our target user, because they wanted to convert all non-premium clients into low touchpoint clients––when in reality all tiers were using customer support as a crutch.

First, they are introduced to the client through the demo and tagging process

They are called again for troubleshooting

Called again when a client changes personnel running Admiral

The only route to currently reach the promised land of BFF.

Our Opportunity

Admiral needed their platform to effectively communicate their value as a horizontal VRM service so that their users can optimize Admiral’s services without relying on customer love support for guidance.

Broadened Scope

The onboarding was initially an afterthought for the client when in reality it was essential for conveying the company’s value.

Given that tight turnaround time, we wanted to properly optimize and direct our efforts by splitting into 2 teams, onboarding (2 designers) and dashboard (3, including myself).

Broadened Scope

The onboarding was initially an afterthought for the client when in reality it was essential for conveying the company’s value.

Given that tight turnaround time, we wanted to properly optimize and direct our efforts by splitting into 2 teams, onboarding (2 designers) and dashboard (3, including myself).

Design Principles

To ensure consistency amongst both teams and all designers, we created these 4 key tenets to drive our design decisions:

Straightforward

Present information in an easily digestible, but polished manner

Human-Centric

Users are more than just statistics––retain a human touch to provide an engaging and approachable product.

Self-Guiding

Provide users with the confidence to adopt the platform into their workflow with minimal external support

Gratifying

Users should leave with a sense of accomplishment and value after engaging with the platform

Ideating Solutions

After creating divergent solutions for the onboarding and dashboard, we tested out these concepts with prospective users, who valued educational guidelines and customization abilities. Based on feedback from our guerilla tests, we conducted a SWOT analysis to determine if and where ideas can converge.

From there, the dashboard and onboarding were fleshed out around three cases each. I led the design of the dashboard and managed the wireframing efforts to ensure a clean and consistent UI pattern.

Proposed Features

01

Streamlined Navigation

We restructured the navigation to integrate the product configuration pages with their corresponding dashboards, and the Quick Manage feature provides shortcuts to the most used tasks.

Proposed Features

02

Comprehensive Guidance

Explanations and guidance are provided wherever possible, in the form of informational hover messages, a virtual tour, and an onboarding process integrated with key tasks

Proposed Features

03

Product Visibility

Increased exposure to Admiral’s suite of products through alert cards, display of unused products through locks or grayed out elements, and recommended articles about optimizing the products.

Proposed Features

04

Personalized Metric Display

The key metrics highlighted promote Admiral’s positive value, and users can organize and customize dashboard metrics to their liking.

Testing with Users

In order to validate this concept, we tested this prototype with six users, four of which were returning clients from prior interviews.

Our main goals going into testing were to test the new design against the existing platform with respect to:

1 Effectively communicating Admiral’s value

At the end of each test, existing and prospective users all left understanding the extent of Admiral’s products.

The grayed out elements were not obtrusive to their user flow while still conveying that there is an unused product; anything more obvious would become a hindrance to their experience.

2 Effectively enhancing the usability of the platform

Users considered the navigation intuitive and the new structure was positively received.

The tour is a useful feature, but they expressed the desire to revisit information shown in the tour at a later stage.

The quick management & recommendations were positively received as shortcuts, but the customization ability can be more apparent.

“The old one was too salesy and colorful. This is more straightforward and to the point.”

-Catherine (Encyclopedia Brittanica), current Admiral client

4.2

Understanding of what Admiral does

4.8

Dashboard Navigation

4.3

Value of content on dashboard

4.6

Likely to recommend Admiral to a coworker

*On a scale of 1-5
1 = very difficult / unlikely; 5= very easy / likely

4.8

ease of dashboard navigation*

92%

likely to recommend Admiral

17%

increase in user satisfaction

*On a scale of 1-5
1 = very difficult / unlikely; 5= very easy / likely

The journey continues...

Given our time restraint, we could not address all of the pain points expressed from our research and testing, so we’ve left the client with recommendations as to how to integrate value and education into the experience:

Integrate Admiral’s brand into the onboarding

to give the human touch of customer love and convey Admiral's value upfront

Consider replacing or supplementing the virtual tour with a video

to follow a journey of a client & gain context for new users

Further research

on the specific actions and priorities for different types of users

Takeaways

Divide and conquer

Splitting up the load at the ideation phase was critical given the breadth of our scope. Trust and confidence between team members was the reason this method succeeded, and was a great collaboration effort

Timeboxing is essential

Working with a new industry, it is so easy to go down a rabbit hole of research, scrambling to familiarize yourself with the content as much as possible. But when you’re on a short timeline, and working in an agile, lean UX workflow, you have to be okay making assumptions and rapidly testing given what you have.

Case Study

Admiral

Recovering lost ad revenue for digital publishers.

The Client

The Task

Recovering lost ad revenue for digital publishers.

Our Client

Our Task

Understanding Admiral's Current State

Understanding Admiral's Current State

Evaluating the competition

01

Admiral’s current dashboard functions solely as a static analytics board

The current onboarding process equates to a simple sign up flow

02

Speaking to Employees

“5% of our users make up 95% of our usage. We want to improve that.”

Admiral's Goals for the Client Experience

Straightforward

Human-Centric

Self-Guiding

Speaking to Clients

“The platform is very accessible because I can email Bryan (customer support)”

Speaking to Clients

“The platform is very accessible because I can email Bryan (customer support)”

Our Findings

01

The dashboard is currently a middleman.

02

Admiral is not conveying their value

03

The current platform is not straightforward.

04

Customer support is Admiral’s primary appeal.

Key User Patterns

5 out of 5 users

4 out of 5 users

1 out of 5 users

5 out of 5 users

“The only thing preventing me from not using new products is lack of knowledge about them…it's not easy to get a snapshot of all the products that Admiral has”

Customer User Flow

Customer Love was a multi-touchpoint for a client to reach the final stage.

Our Opportunity

Broadened Scope

Our Opportunity

Broadened Scope

Design Principles

Straightforward

Human-Centric

Self-Guiding

Gratifying

Ideating Solutions

Proposed Features

01

Proposed Features

02

Proposed Features

03

Proposed Features

04

Testing with Users

1

Effectively communicating Admiral’s value

2

Effectively enhancing the usability of the platform

“The old one was too salesy and colorful. This is more straightforward and to the point.”

4.2

4.8

4.3

4.6

4.8

92%

17%

Solution

One place to configure, manage, and organize.

The journey continues...

Integrate Admiral’s brand into the onboarding

to give the human touch of customer love and convey Admiral's value upfront

Consider replacing or supplementing the virtual tour with a video

to follow a journey of a client & gain context for new users