UX and UI Design for Social Media Management Platform Search Bot Feature
Protected clients’ brand from extraordinary events by designing a Search Bot Feature that uses Machine Learning to monitor their social media feeds.
My role and responsibilities
New Feature | 4 week sprint | Team 5 | Research | Wireframes | UI Design | Prototypes
Five-member project team: Machine Learning Software Architect, Front-end Developer, Machine Learning Analyst, Product Owner and UX Designer (me). We were all part of a remote 25-member Agile product team.
I was responsible for designing the search bot feature. My process included: research, refining the problem, UI design, interaction design, prototyping and testing.
Challenge
SocialPatrol is an enterprise web app developed by ICUC to manage their clients’ social media channels. SocialPatrol clients needed a way to monitor their social media feeds for extraordinary once in a blue moon events. We needed to reduce the risk of missing positive or negative exceptional posts, and help content specialists responded faster and more accurately to such posts.
Goals
For users responsible for managing clients social media content, this feature would act as a safety net making sure no posts about unprecedented events are missed and would improve response time.
For clients, this feature would save brands from the fallout of controversial and damaging posts as well as identify opportunities to build brand engagement with positive posts.
For ICUC, the search bot feature would reduce labour costs and ensure that they meet contractual requirements.
Who would use it
The search bot had two parts: creating a search and responding to content found by the search. Machine Learning Analysts and Brand Managers would set up searches. Content specialists would action to content retrieved by the search.
What I did
Discovery
The key to any successful project is understanding the problem. The team need to understand; why we needed this feature and what it needed to do.
Planning and Design
Throughout the project, I regularly collaborated with my team using wireframes and prototypes. I used feedback from users, and the project team to refine the design.
User Stories and Task Flows
I created User Stories, Scenarios and Task Flows to help the team empathize and better understand what our users needed to accomplish.
Wireframes: the Design Evolves
The software architect did the initial wireframe. I used that as a starting point and worked to stakeholders to clarify and identify why we were building the Search Bot’s and what this feature needed to do. Using this information, I refined and streamlined the design. The final wireframe included enough information to efficiently complete the task and translated the terminology from developer speak to more user-friendly terms.
I designed the UI and interactions and created low and high fidelity wireframes using Sketch. I shared the final UI design and interactions with the front-end developer using screen annotations screens and InVision’s inspect feature.
Prototyping and Testing
Prototyping and testing were key to delivering a great feature; the feedback from this stage helped us maintain focused on business and user goals. I created and tested concepts using prototypes built in InVision
Lessons Learned and Outcomes
As a designer, it can be uncomfortable to show rough ideas. Failing early was the key to our success. Showing the wrong solution guided us to build the right solution.
Early on in the project, there was some confusion about how the search bot would work. How would the content specialist respond to posts highlighted by the search bot? I created a low fidelity prototype. When I shared this with the team, we saw a problem; there was a disconnect between what the user needed and what the system needed. Collaboratively we were able to refine our solution to work for both.
At the end of our sprint, ICUC’s decided to shift their focus and put the search bot feature on hold.