UX Project: Forecaster

role: LEAD USER RESEARCHER, ui/ux designer

TOOL: BASAMIQ, SKETCH, INVISION

Being able to forecast before creating a campaign is a big user request. It is the top 1 feature that being asked by users during the product survey for many years. This project is a L size 4-6 week research and design project. 

Design Process Summary

1. Product Manager holds a kick off meeting with UX Designer to discuss the business requirements and the survey results
2. Product Manager reaches out to internal and external users and schedules user interviews
3. UX Designer facilitates the user research interviews
4. UX Designer and Product Manager define the user types and use cases
5. UX Designer starts on ideation and sketches
6. UX Designer and Product Manager sync up on ideas 
7. UX Designer works on lo-fidelity mockups 
8. UX Designer and Product Manager schedule users for user testing round 1
9. UX Designer walks through the design with users 
10. UX Designer applies the feedback and iterates the design
11. Product Manager and UX Designer presents the designs to UI developers to get feedback on technical feasibility 
12. UX Designer and Product Manager schedule users for user testing round 2
13. UX Designer walks through the design with users 
14. UX Designer applies the feedback and finalize the design and prototype
15. Product Manager, UX Designer and UI Developers discuss breaking down different stages for implementing the design in the UI planning meeting
16. Product Manager finalize the product requirements in the tickets

User Research

In the kick off meeting with Product Manager, we went through the survey results and sorted the related users. We reached out to the users that request the forecast feature and set up the user interviews with them. The purpose of the user interview is to figure out the user types and their current work around. 

We interviewed 5 internal users and 4 external clients: 

• Q1: What is your role? Day to day work? (Define user type)
• Q2: How do you forecast your campaigns today? (Understand user workflow)
• Q3: Have you used the forecaster App? (Asked about the existing forecast workflow in our platform)
  • If yes, how do you like the App? What do you like/display about the current App?
  • If no, Why not?
• Q4: Do you use forecasting on other platforms? Are there any features you like that you wish our forecaster has? (Understand the competitors’ workflow and user expectation)

After 2 weeks user interview, we identified two user types: Media Planner and Account Manager. Media Planner would like to plan out the budget before they commit to a campaign creation; while Account Manager wants to reach out to maximum audiences within X budget.

Design Process

After defined the user types and user needs, I started to write down the design requirements and brain storm the ideas. During the interview, Media Planner wants a quick way to forecast the budget without filling out 5 pages form to create a campaign. Account Manager wants a real time update on how many audience they can reach while playing with the audience segments. 

The design focused on a few questions: 

• Where to generate the forecast?
• What fields will be on the form?
• How to present the relationship between budget and audience reach?
• How to save the forecast?
• How to turn a forecast into a campaign?
• How can user trust the forecast? 

With these design question in mind, I sketched out some solutions. Then Product Manager and I brought the ideas to the UI Developers. For developing the whole experience, with save, forecast score and generate campaign function, it will take up 6 months to build. So we decide to break down by a few stages. Providing forecast data before campaign and during campaign would be our MVP product. 

I created several lo-fidelity mockups to validate the questions of where to put forecast, what's on the form and how to play with budget. 

Here is the workflow for Media Planner: 

For Account Manager, forecast data is implemented in the Campaign/ Strategy creation and management workflow. When user update the audience or other segments, the forecast data will update automatically. 

Next Step

After the MVP product got released, we sent out a survey to the users to get their feedback. Most users are happy about having this function, but they have the doubt of the data accuracy. For the next step, we will focus on solving this problem.