AdMaker is Pandora's self serve tool that allows advertisers to create and publish high quality audio and podcast ads.
When my involvement began in May 2021, AdMaker existed as a closed beta to a limited market. As the lead designer on the project, my goals included capturing $2,000,000 in missed ad campaign spend, streamlining the end to end ad creation process and usability testing the new platform experience for the open beta release. This project page shows a snippet of three problem areas I worked on.
1. Information architecture
With users expressing some difficulty understanding and navigating through the ad creation process, there was a need to rework the information architecture which I was heavily involved with.
2. Audio tags experience
The UX involved with one of AdMaker's unique selling points - audio tags - led to a large amount of manual work on the back end caused by user error, requiring it to be taken back to the drawing board.
3. Payment flow
A combination of multiple payment models, complex add-on options and confusing language led to users having trouble understanding the cost breakdown of an order, necessitating the need for a redesign.
The first step in tackling the issues was for me to create effective partnerships with key stakeholders. One of my skills is to figure out optimum working styles with individual stakeholders in a manner that got things done efficiently while adhering to the timeline and maintaining a high level of excellence with the product.
Product
Effective collaboration using modern tools to help optimize workflow and make informed product decisions
Legal
Frequently touched base to make sure the designs and language used across the experience were in line with legal requirements
Customers
Ensured a high level of satisfaction with the end to end experience
Engineering
Established efficient workflows between two engineering teams to help mitigate risk early
Business and Finance
Periodic check-ins to ensure design decisions are in line with business requirements
The closed beta end to end experience was described as confusing with some users having difficulty understanding where they were in the ad creation process. A decision was made by the business to rework the information architecture in a way that would mitigate some of the problems brought up in the closed beta. This had to be done carefully since engineering resources were limited. Keeping them in the loop from an early stage helped manage realistic expectations and timelines and helped the team stay aligned. After working closely with my PM, we proposed a new flow that simplified the process of creating an ad by breaking down the key steps and displaying them in bite sized pieces.
The new experience features a clearer approach to navigation, better visibility into their progress and additional guidance to help educate and empower the user. Various UI improvements helped reduce visual clutter and eliminated inconsistencies. The steps involved in the ad creation process was split into multiple pages so as to avoid overwhelming the user and increasing cognitive load.
Audio tags is one of AdMaker's unique features that allows users to create multiple variations of an ad (such as targeting different locations or demographics) at a lower cost, compared to producing the ads separately.
A number of users from the closed beta experience reported having trouble understanding this concept and inadvertently submitted ads for production that were incorrectly drafted. This led to the team at Pandora manually fixing the ad requests and then having to verify with final draft with the advertiser before sending it to production. Due to the complexity involved, the business stakeholders initially proposed pushing this feature out to the GA release, but this would mean potentially losing out on 24% of total orders.
Users unsure how to specify tag location
Users using tags incorrectly, requiring revisions
Slow workflow for orders with 30+ tags
I advocated for this feature to be included in the open beta and requested the decision to be pushed by two weeks, giving me the time to find a way to work around the problem. After brainstorming ideas with some of the stakeholders, we landed on two approaches to help tackle the problem. The first one utilized a similar structure to the existing feature with the various elements separated, and the second one used an integrated model, allowing users to provide better production instructions.
For this situation, a quantitative approach in the form of an A/B test would've likely provided better results, but given the nature of the product and the limited access to end users, I decided to run the two concepts with six users in the form of a cognitive walkthrough. The goal wasn't to have them pick the concept they liked better, but instead discover the weaknesses of each concept.
The integrated approach resonated better with the users and we found that they would be more likely to provide better production instructions if it were integrated with the rest of the script. This was also in line with the processes a lot of advertisers users use where they begin the process with the script and instructions ready and required them to spend less time transferring the information into AdMaker. The screen below shows what we landed on by employing the feedback we received on the two ideas.
Alternate method to upload required data for advertisers with larger media spends to cater to their needs
Live previews with validation to reduce user errors
Multiple checks in place that dynamically surface potential user errors gracefully
Embedded adequate level of guidance across experience to educate users and minimize errors
The payment model in the closed beta used a concept called creative cash, which the users described as hard to work with. This was especially true for order payments involving a combination of creative cash and a credit card. A decision was made to replace this with a new concept called free ads. To accommodate this change, I revamped the existing flow in a way that better integrated free ads into the experience. The screen below displays the existing payment flow and the one below that is the redesign.
Itemized list causes problems with orders containing large number of ads
Creative cash identified as a major friction point
Nested ad attributes to account with scalability in mind for orders with large number of ads
Ad attributes with tags to allow for transparent transactions
The AdMaker project has been extremely rewarding to work on, especially considering the time and resource limitations we had to work around. One of my takeaways was understanding the importance of establishing effective partnerships at an early stage which allowed me to make design decisions quickly. While optimizing my time between addressing the issues from the closed beta and simultaneously working on new features was a challenge, it kept me engaged and on my toes (which is where I like to be!) and helped me execute designs that exceeded expectations.
Besides contributing directly to the product, I was able to identify ways to improve collaboration processes such as brainstorming ideas with stakeholders over FigJam, coming up with a new way to create live links between Figma and the PRD to reduce the risk of inaccurate designs being referenced, establishing better hand-off processes to engineering etc.
Like I mentioned earlier, this page is merely a snapshot of my involvement with AdMaker. If you'd like to see the full case study, I'd be happy to walk you through it! Let's connect :)