Creation of a new platform to allow advertisers and agencies easily manage their employees and partners.
Client
Role
Product Designer
Industry
Commerce
Overview
Pinterest needed to provide business owners a way to manage employees, business partners, and access credentials to ad accounts. I worked on the product from its initial prototype "alpha" stage to publically launching to a large market of business owners..
Problem Definition
Pinterest's product team helped us define the customer's "needs/wants/desires" through multiple interviews and early prototype feedback sessions. Our OKRs were prioritized and defined by the customer's desire to:
Easily bulk add employees and partners to their ad accounts
View who has access to their ad account and what permissions they have (ex. Business owner role, Manager role, employee role)
Request access to an ad account
Assimilate the create ad accounts user flow (the flow already existed elsewhere in Pinterest's business platform, but needed to be included into this new app)
Design Process
Our internal process:
Wireframe/sketch prioritized user flows
Use Pinterest's design system to aid in creating high-fidelity prototypes
Follow three-part feedback and iteration protocol
Design team review process:
Formally review flows and design elements with business design team. Make sure design elements are inline with design system best practices if we needed to create a new component.
Review flows with team developers, with additional time spent with front-end developers to ensure component best practice adherence and interaction details.
Final review and "OK" by product manager before setting up internal tests and feedback sessions with customers.
Outcome
When I joined the project, Pinterest was already a few years behind its competitors (Facebook, Twitter) on creating an ad platform with a permission structure that enables meticulous control and visibility over the access granted to team members and partners.
Launching this new platform tool unlocked doors for customers with a business account to successfully assign account access and permissions for employees and partners.
Video credit: Adrianna - Kordial Media
Learnings
I had wonderful takeaways from working with such a robust design culture and diligent product team:
New-to-me collaboration process with a design system team to create new components.
We used the iterative testing environment for this project to stress-test and validate new design elements before they were fully incorporated into the official business design system.
"The needs of the small business is just as important as the needs of a Fortune 500 company."
The product team helped create strict OKRs based on customer feedback. They diversified customers to help us challenge our assumptions (Large companies with over 500 employees, small business owners with multiple business partners, etc.).
"Show, don't tell."
With a new feature, we had the opportunity to include robust onboarding to help familiarize customers with complex workflows. We had success with animations and subtle, in-situ tooltips to build confidence and knowledge.