Designing foundational components
Client
Issuu
Services
UX/U.i Design
Industries
SAAS/Marketing Tech
Date
2022
Objective
Results
• A go to market MVP.
• Scalable, Industry-standard components to be used in other features within Issuu's platform.
As the UX designer in a team with one product manager and five engineers, I facilitated workshops to clarify the problem and brainstorm solutions. I coordinated and conducted user tests to understand why user see value in the product and what jobs they need to have done.
Analyzed pain points and document insights for the research, Synthesized the research in action statements, which I presented to the team and key stakeholders. I constructed prototypes for iterations and created documentation for implementation and the Design System
The Process
Understanding the Problem
I inherited this project from two designers who had left the company during an advanced implementation stage. The existing solution was low-fidelity and incomplete. It lacked fully developed designs, adequate consideration of different user scenarios, and thorough user testing. Despite these challenges being unknown to the rest of the company, I received substantial support from the design department.
I communicated the project’s shortcomings to non-design stakeholders, clarifying that the current trajectory was unlikely to meet our goals. After several consultations, I spearheaded a series of workshops to address these issues, resulting in three main objectives
Key Objectives
Refactor Design Debt
Define the value proposition of Social Post to ensure the solution’s effectiveness. Define value proposition of each feature.
Go-to-Market
Optimize the solution to align with or surpass industry standards. Expand our design system component library in order to update other features efficiently.
Desk Research
Iteratively, conducted desk research. Analysed direct/in-direct competitors. Reviewed feature patterns and did comparisons with the existing implementation.
Facilitation & Workshops
We initiated the project by holding workshops with the team and external stakeholders to outline the tool’s expected outcomes and key performance indicators (KPIs). During these sessions, I facilitated discussions on trade-offs and communicated the needs of the design and engineering teams. After aligning on a core offering, we developed a new prototype for usability testing.
User Testing
In total, nine usability tests were conducted—five with the initial prototype and four during a soft release. The soft release involved incrementally introducing the tool to the public, adding 10% of Issuu’s user base twice a week until full deployment.
Affinity Mapping
Insights from from the datawall were clustered into themes in order to identify patterns in behaviours and needs.
Design System
We designed components to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and to be versatile enough for integration into other solutions. Notably, components from the Social Tool were incorporated into Issuu’s Articles feature and the link & video editor.
Templates
Provides the ability to format content for the intended platform.
Publications
The assets from a flip books that have been uploaded to issuu.
Uploads
Allow users to upload assets from cloud or hardrive.
Text
Users can add additional text fields to the canvas.