Lightspeed is a SaaS application for creating and managing mobile advertising campaigns from a variety of traffic sources. Our goal was to create a single, simplifed interface, keeping the user focused on getting quality users.
The world of mobile advertising was new to me. I had no idea of the level of complexity involved in such a system and the challenges ahead.
###Research
Perion already had a SEM department (Search engine marketing), and we had great access to users using systems in the market we were going to disrupt. We held user interviews with them, “shadowed” them at their desk to find pain points they have with existing solutions and gathered them to a session of card sorting exercises to help us establish a solid structure for the app’s information architecture.
Meanwhile, I was studing the competitors, familiarizing myself with how the mobile advertising eco-system works. I needed to know the funnel so I can better communicate with the advanced users who use these systems.
To somehow summerize the research phase, and as a way to share the design team’s work, I created a glossary web page to help expand the team knowledge in the mobile marketing world and help bring everybody involved on board.
###Structure
There are two “modes” to the service - data consumption mode and data creation mode. Under consumption we have the dashboard and the reports section, under data creation we have the campaign builder wizard.
The main entry point of the service is the dashboard. One of the challenges was to create a glance view of current running campaigns filled with important information while keeping the data easy to consume with a clear visual hierarchy. A unique feature is the “spotlight” - top five ranking campaigns and creatives, giving a user the ability to quickly act upon specific “good” / “bad” campaigns and compare them against others.
The amount of input needed to create a new campaign can be overwhelming. We needed to break down the wizard into logical sections to keep the user focused and help him complete small tasks. The wizard is made up of six sections, each one building on top of the previous one in a logical order, from basic setup to placing the bid for each ad in the campaign.
The service has a learning algorithm that populated certain parts of the inputs based on previous user campaigns and a collective suggestion engine from other users running similar campaigns in that category. The user is left with adding a minimal amount of input, making it very easy and intuitive to create a new campaign or duplicating an existing one.
###Team play
Working in an agile team means being very commutative and open with the PM’s & DEV team. In addition to daily stand-up meetings, I had to make sure everybody’s on track and ensure dev teams across departments had all the assets needed. I opt for a “single source of truth” - one location to reference all stackholders.
I’ve build two web pages with a JSON as a data base which I kept updating. All you had to do to get a feature’s spec or to find the latest design iteration was to type its name in the search field. It worked very well. Miscommunication was reduced to a minimum and delivery times shorten.
###Closing
Since I left Perion in 2014, “Lightspeed” came out of private beta and the product’s name changed to “GrowMobile”.
The UI got a fresh coat of paint and facelift to go along with a new brand but designs shown here still hold true in concept and experience. I’m excited to see how the product will evolve in the future and i’m sure will have a strong impact in the mobile advertising world.
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