In late 2020, WeBridge decided to develop a SaaS platform to promote PR resources and find more business opportunities.
After research, we define Seadog as a platform that allows users to discover and manage journalists' connections. The goal of this system is to sell PR solutions to clients.
1 Project Manager
- 1 Designer (me)
- 2 Design Interns
1 Public Relations Director
- 2 Public Relations Manager
- 6~10 PR Specialists & Interns
1 Strategic Research Specialist
1 In-house Front-end Developer
1 Out-sourced Dev Team (5 SDEs)
2020/10 ~ Present
My Role
As the lead designer, I collaborated with every team member and worked on this project from the early stages of conception to prototyping and testing.
My Deliverables
Design Research
System Framework
UI Assets Creation
Documentations
Website & Mobile Site Design
Testing and Iteration
Tools
Illustrator
Adobe XD
Design Process
Design Research
Primary Research
Interviews with Brand/PR Managers
Interviews with Investors
Secondary Research
Competitor Analysis
SWOT Analysis
The Process
Starting, we had phone interviews with our clients and business partners to understand and empathy their needs for journalists' solutions.
We also had interviews with investors about the potential and possibility of a PR SaaS platform. We wanted to know the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Our design research mixed with project research; we also conducted secondary research to understand the industry, the potential, the market sizes, and the competition.
Design Process
Major Learnings
Emails can get lost
Journalists are busy. Catching them at a good time can be challenging, especially when our users are in China and the only way they can reach out to overseas journalists is by email.
- This was one of the main reasons we have incentives within our campaign management system to standardize and normalize a failed pitch.
Too much misinformation and lack of knowledge
We do PR, press, and pitches differently in countries. Our potential users -- PRers in China, are not familiar with the overseas pitching process. Meanwhile, users are unwilling to learn about this since their primary objective is to effectively spend a brand's budget for a PR solution and hire professionals.
- This is why we switch the business model from a paid PR solution system so that you can launch campaigns by yourself' to 'a PR management system so that you can control and forecast your campaigns -- don't let your agencies lie to you'.
Golden data
Our secondary user group is marketing/PR agencies. Most of a PR specialist's time is spent on endless data gathering and networking.
- Our system was designed to provide busy professionals with a time-saving solution for their job.
- To fulfill the user's need, we added a 'Media List' section within our system. This section provides a generic PR solution for an early-stage campaign.
Research to understand potential users, ideate to solve real problems, and design backed by honest user feedback.
Each research activity and interaction helped us refine our solution and decide on what needed to be included in the system and what did not.
Define & Ideate
Structures Ideation
Define
Based on research, I identified my target audience & design opportunity.
User's problem statement:
A Chinese marketer needs overseas journalist resources because the campaign they are working on requires a wide range of journalist selections and is time-sensitive.
Design opportunities:
Call-to-action: A system encourages sign-up and paid subscription
Database: Users can access different types of PR resources (journalists and press)
Campaign Management: Manage a PR campaign using selected resources
Provide Value: digital insights and reports about campaigns
Structures
Structure No.1
Brief: Research/Project/List Structure, simple but fill user's need
Searching anything under a type (journalist/article/press) by a keyword
Issues:
1. weak incentive for sign-up or subscription
2. 'anything by a keyword' is relatively unrealistic for our dev-team
3. Poor campaign management system
Framework
Lo-fi prototype
Structure No.2
Brief: Research/Notices/List/Contact/Monitor Structure, a complex PR solution with different functions
Search by names (journalist's name, article's name, or press's name)
Issues:
1. It Can be too complicated for users without enough PR knowledge
2. Users can't get desired search results ('search by names', users don't know the names)
3. Some functions can be combined together for a clearer view
4. Poor incentive for sign-up or subscription
Framework
Lo-fi prototype
Structure No.3
Brief: Signup -> dashboard -> search/campaign/msg ; A vertical structure for an insider-only PR campaign mgmt solution
Search by journalist's keywords results in a multi-dimensional view
Issues:
1. Users have to sign-up; a high barrier for new users
2. Dashboard can be frustrating for a new user who doesn't have any campaign or list records within our system
3. Research system contains too much information - each page can only display up to 5 journalists. This makes browsing difficult for users.
Framework
Lo-fi prototype
Structure No.4 (Selected)
Brief: Search/Campaign Center/Media Lists/Smart Solutions structure, innovative solution section designed to trigger sign-up
Search by keywords with filters and keywords instructions
Issues:
1. Need further visualization for journalists' data
2. Need to enrich user and campaign dashboards further
3. Too many layers within each section, consider using pop-up or other ways
Framework
Lo-fi prototype
Usability Testing & Validation
Creating a clearer user experience
How shall we promote Seadog's Choice?
Seadog's Choice originated from a label in our system -- past collaboration. We use the number of past collaborations with a journalist to weigh a journalist's importance.
We first used 'Seadog's Choice' as a keyword like 'industry' or 'country.' And we soon found out that:
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Users faced sorting trouble when sorting 'Seadog's Choice.'
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'Seadog's Choice' can reveal our business situation for specific keywords like countries.
I redesigned our system and made 'Seadog's Choice' a separate box. We confirmed that users find this way is better through user tests, and gladly, we saw an increase in membership inquiries.
Making the 'price lists' clearer
Some users had difficulties figuring out the differences between our plans.
Initially, I designed different boxes to display plans and used colors to make the comparisons.
Usability test results showed that users found it confusing. I added another benefits comparison table to improve the user's experience for the pricing page. This time results proved a great success -- 100% of the users clearly understood our plans.
What's better than a traditional filter?
A 'traditional' search engine will have just one input box, and users type in whatever they have in mind. Advanced systems might have checkboxes, cards, or filters to get an accurate search result.
We faced the following troubles when we built the 'traditional' type of search:
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Repetitive results when searching different keywords
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Keywords capture issues
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Unable to automatically correct invalid keywords
We don't have a world-class dev team to make the 'dreams' come true. So I chose to discover a different way to solve the problem. Using a label-based search system, We made users to input our selected only keyword options and keywords. And we also achieve a clearer sorting experience.
