“Design the platform that uses search demand as a metric to deliver targeted recommendations to editors so that we can generate timely and valuable content to resell to partners. ”
My Role
Role: Design Team Lead
Role: Principal Designer
Reported to: VP AOL Media
Project
This enterprise platform project which lasted for nearly 18 months spanned the entire lifecycle of the product including market research, strategy, concepts, prototyping, platform integration, development and deployment.
My team was responsible for delivering recommendations for product design, data visualization design, visual language system, infographics, user flows, prototyping concepts with multiple in-house development teams, and delivering design specs for production. Additionally we were retained to help execute marketing deliverables to promote product services.
The entirety of this product has now been rolled up under the AOL Advertising offering.
A workflow sample provided by my team
Challenge
AOL came to us after a series of successful enterprise platform design projects to help define their Demand Content Platform, later renamed AOL Content Solutions. The idea was big, "source the web for search trends in real-time to provide editorial content ideas to producers." It required the linking of several disciplines, workflows, algorithms and technologies together to work properly, and my team served as the conceptual liaison between all of them.
Detail of data visulization for mapping search demand
Process
Armed with primary market research conducted before the engagement, our process started with many weeks of collaboration with stakeholders from media, advertising, marketing, content (Seed.com), and in-house development teams. I led workshops designed to elicit the discrete needs and business rules necessary to start designing concepts that would become prototypes.
Following a season of exhaustive collaboration, I began working in smaller groups delivering hi-fidelity wireframes as a means of rudimentary user acceptance testing while gaining concept approval.
Prototype Sample: Demand Platform, simplified list views
Solution
My team worked through a significant number of prototype iterations that evolved from more esoteric and complex interaction design to simpler executions like the one shown here. In total, we delivered:
- Fully functional prototype including personal scoring, bookmarking, and filtering
- User experience flows and development specs
- Platform UI design
- Visual language system and style guide
Process Examples
