Power of interaction - Solving for reptitive tasks in campaign generation

We transform ideas into
visual masterpieces.

Experimentation at the speed of thoughts // Interactive campaign builder for marketers

Experimentation at the speed of thoughts // Interactive campaign builder for marketers

Experimentation at the speed of thoughts // Interactive campaign builder for marketers

Plotline | 2024

Plotline | 2024

Be it creating the most optimal onboarding flow for new users, improving feature adoption or bringing delight via gamification and rewards to their apps, growth teams need to experiment with a lot of lot of ideas and then determine what is working for their users.

How to enable them to launch such experiments at hyper-speed with complete confidence and reliability

Be it creating the most optimal onboarding flow for new users, improving feature adoption or bringing delight via gamification and rewards to their apps, growth teams need to experiment with a lot of lot of ideas and then determine what is working for their users.

How to enable them to launch such experiments at hyper-speed with complete confidence and reliability

Be it creating the most optimal onboarding flow for new users, improving feature adoption or bringing delight via gamification and rewards to their apps, growth teams need to experiment with a lot of lot of ideas and then determine what is working for their users.

How to enable them to launch such experiments at hyper-speed with complete confidence and reliability

Should using AI tools feel like talking to a godly superpower, or a partner that solves problems with you?

Why did we do this? To make marketers more confident than ever in launching experiments at scale

Should using AI tools feel like talking to a godly superpower, or a partner that solves problems with you?

Why did we do this? To make marketers more confident than ever in launching experiments at scale

CONTEXT

CONTEXT

What does Plotline do?

What does Plotline do?

What does Plotline do?

Plotline helps growth teams at consumer apps with onboarding, activation, adoption and retention use cases by letting them build elements like stories, in-line widgets, floating buttons, spotlights, quizzes, scratch cards and much more - without code. We have built a platform for marketers to enable them to nudge the right user at the right time to perform the intended action

PROBLEM

Our users were facing critical issues in creating campaigns

Our users were facing critical issues in creating campaigns

Our users were facing critical issues in creating campaigns

Users from some of the biggest consumer brands of India like Dream11, Niyo, CoinDCX, Jar, Khatabook use our platform daily to create in-app engagement campaigns. The more time they spend on creating any campaign, the more delayed the launch and thus this translates to a delay in improving the adoption, activation and retention of their end users.

Not able to match their internal designs fully on UI elements created via Plotline

Confusion around inputs, units and dimensions while creating content

Taking too long to create and launch a campaign

We needed to understand deeper the problems in our existing workflow and what exactly to work on

Secondary & Primary research

Understanding the current state of campaign creation


Benchmarking against similar workflows


Conducting usability studies with users on the existing flows to discover apparent and latent needs

Scoping and Solutioning

Defining the scope of the solution


Iterations and internal consolidation


Designs of the improved experience

Feedback, Iterate & Validate

Collecting feedback from new and power users


Iterating based on feedback


Launch and validation

Understanding existing workflows, benchmarking, uncovering any latent aspirations

I did an in-depth UX audit of the existing workflow

I did an in-depth UX audit of the existing workflow

I did an in-depth UX audit of the existing workflow

I worked closely with Growth managers, Marketers and Product managers to understand the caveats of the current campaign creation experience. along with a lot of insights from Plotline's support and customer success teams to get a comprehensive view of the problem space.

I worked closely with Growth managers, Marketers and Product managers to understand the caveats of the current campaign creation experience. along with a lot of insights from Plotline's support and customer success teams to get a comprehensive view of the problem space.

I worked closely with Growth managers, Marketers and Product managers to understand the caveats of the current campaign creation experience. along with a lot of insights from Plotline's support and customer success teams to get a comprehensive view of the problem space.

Step 1 - Content

Step 1 - Content

Step 1 - Content

Here's how the content section was built on the platform

Here's how the content section was built on the platform

Here's how the content section was built on the platform

Step 2 - Audience

Step 2 - Audience

Step 2 - Audience

Here's how Audience section was built on the platform

Here's how Audience section was built on the platform

Here's how Audience section was built on the platform

Step 3 - Scheduling

Step 3 - Scheduling

Step 3 - Scheduling

Here's how Scheduling section was built on the platform

Here's how Scheduling section was built on the platform

Here's how Scheduling section was built on the platform

Step 4 - Goals

Step 4 - Goals

Step 4 - Goals

Here's how Goals section was built on the platform

Here's how Goals section was built on the platform

Here's how Goals section was built on the platform

Content creation (Step 1) was the biggest factor which led to increased time to create and launch campaigns. To dive deeper, I conducted contextual inquiries with users from 6 orgs to understand at an elemental level what was taking up users time and adding to complexities in this step.

Key areas of improvement in Step 1 - Content builder

Key areas of improvement in Step 1 - Content builder

Key areas of improvement in Step 1 - Content builder

It was difficult to find the exact element users wanted to edit

  • Due to the high customisability of UI elements like modals, tooltips, widgets etc., there are a lot of elements like Heading, image, body, buttons

  • Selecting one of these to edit became difficult due to too much nesting in layers.

  • Auxiliary functions like re-ordering, deleting, and adding elements were difficult to access

  • Due to the high customisability of UI elements like modals, tooltips, widgets etc., there are a lot of elements like Heading, image, body, buttons

  • Selecting one of these to edit became difficult due to too much nesting in layers.

  • Auxiliary functions like re-ordering, deleting, and adding elements were difficult to access

Contextual toolbars for different elements

  • Accessing these functions via accordions for the respective element was both cumbersome as well as not precise.

  • We needed to give a more efficient way to perform these actions with instantaneous feedback

  • Accessing these functions via accordions for the respective element was both cumbersome as well as not precise.

  • We needed to give a more efficient way to perform these actions with instantaneous feedback

Users find margin padding for every element very confusing

  • Units of margin/padding in dp/pixel adds to the confusion

  • There were lot of redundant spacing inputs being taken from the users which again complicated the process

  • Units of margin/padding in dp/pixel adds to the confusion

  • There were lot of redundant spacing inputs being taken from the users which again complicated the process

Solving for element selection and auxiliary functions

Solving for element selection and auxiliary functions

Solving for element selection and auxiliary functions

One of the main problem areas was the difficulty of element selection. That's why building an interactive preview was prioritised so that users can easily hover, click, move, select and delete elements directly from the preview.

One of the main problem areas was the difficulty of element selection. That's why building an interactive preview was prioritised so that users can easily hover, click, move, select and delete elements directly from the preview.

One of the main problem areas was the difficulty of element selection. That's why building an interactive preview was prioritised so that users can easily hover, click, move, select and delete elements directly from the preview.

Problem
Every element needed to be selected from a maze of accordions with generic identifiers such as Image, Body etc. If there were multiple text blocks, images, it became difficult to identify the intended element.

Problem
Every element needed to be selected from a maze of accordions with generic identifiers such as Image, Body etc. If there were multiple text blocks, images, it became difficult to identify the intended element.

Problem
Every element needed to be selected from a maze of accordions with generic identifiers such as Image, Body etc. If there were multiple text blocks, images, it became difficult to identify the intended element.

Solution
Making the preview interactive made navigating through the complex maze of accordions redundant and allowed for a much more precise and quick element selection

Solution
Making the preview interactive made navigating through the complex maze of accordions redundant and allowed for a much more precise and quick element selection

Solution
Making the preview interactive made navigating through the complex maze of accordions redundant and allowed for a much more precise and quick element selection

Adding a visual feedback and slider for margin/padding

Adding a visual feedback and slider for margin/padding

Adding a visual feedback and slider for margin/padding

In the secondary as well as primary research, it was evident that majority of the campaigns had content which had equal inputs for margin/padding corner radius across dimensions. Even a small change led to the user changing it 4 times which added to the time taking nature of this step.

In the secondary as well as primary research, it was evident that majority of the campaigns had content which had equal inputs for margin/padding corner radius across dimensions. Even a small change led to the user changing it 4 times which added to the time taking nature of this step.

In the secondary as well as primary research, it was evident that majority of the campaigns had content which had equal inputs for margin/padding corner radius across dimensions. Even a small change led to the user changing it 4 times which added to the time taking nature of this step.

Problem
Editing margin padding for every element individually for each side with confusing units like dp/px was very cumbersome.

Problem
Editing margin padding for every element individually for each side with confusing units like dp/px was very cumbersome.

Problem
Editing margin padding for every element individually for each side with confusing units like dp/px was very cumbersome.

Solution
Providing feedback in preview in a WYSIWYG manner removes the confusion around exactly what dimension is getting changed

Solution
Providing feedback in preview in a WYSIWYG manner removes the confusion around exactly what dimension is getting changed

Solution
Providing feedback in preview in a WYSIWYG manner removes the confusion around exactly what dimension is getting changed

Changing the base layout to facilitate a more semantic content building experience

Changing the base layout to facilitate a more semantic content building experience

Changing the base layout to facilitate a more semantic content building experience

The earlier experience was centred around selecting and editing the elements from the accordions and just seeing the changes reflected in the preview. However, the new experience made interacting with the preview the primary function of content creation and editing

The earlier experience was centred around selecting and editing the elements from the accordions and just seeing the changes reflected in the preview. However, the new experience made interacting with the preview the primary function of content creation and editing

The earlier experience was centred around selecting and editing the elements from the accordions and just seeing the changes reflected in the preview. However, the new experience made interacting with the preview the primary function of content creation and editing

Problem
Accordion based element finding and editing involved lots of inputs and compounded the time and complexity in creating nudges

Problem
Accordion based element finding and editing involved lots of inputs and compounded the time and complexity in creating nudges

Problem
Accordion based element finding and editing involved lots of inputs and compounded the time and complexity in creating nudges

Solution
Now, preview is the first block you see and interact with highlighting its prominence

Solution
Now, preview is the first block you see and interact with highlighting its prominence

Solution
Now, preview is the first block you see and interact with highlighting its prominence

Output and outcomes

Output and outcomes

Output and outcomes

We tested the new interactive builder approach with marketers. Job to be done was kept the same - Building a 4 step onboarding campaign for their end users.

We tested the new interactive builder approach with marketers. Job to be done was kept the same - Building a 4 step onboarding campaign for their end users.

We tested the new interactive builder approach with marketers. Job to be done was kept the same - Building a 4 step onboarding campaign for their end users.

  • Time taken to create the campaign content reduced from ~15-20 mins to ~4-5 mins.

  • Users said that directly selecting the element they wanted to edit was much more intuitive than matching the layers in accordions as before

  • Visual cues on the dimension being changed greatly helped in 1:1 relevance while editing.

  • Time taken to create the campaign content reduced from ~15-20 mins to ~4-5 mins.

  • Users said that directly selecting the element they wanted to edit was much more intuitive than matching the layers in accordions as before

  • Visual cues on the dimension being changed greatly helped in 1:1 relevance while editing.

  • Time taken to create the campaign content reduced from ~15-20 mins to ~4-5 mins.

  • Users said that directly selecting the element they wanted to edit was much more intuitive than matching the layers in accordions as before

  • Visual cues on the dimension being changed greatly helped in 1:1 relevance while editing.

Many parts of this project are proprietary and not available to be shown here. I would be happy to go over the complete thought behind it and the current implementation in our dashboard over a call anytime!

Many parts of this project are proprietary and not available to be shown here. I would be happy to go over the complete thought behind it and the current implementation in our dashboard over a call anytime!

Many parts of this project are proprietary and not available to be shown here. I would be happy to go over the complete thought behind it and the current implementation in our dashboard over a call anytime!