What is Symend?
Symend is a platform that transforms customer challenges into engagement opportunities, offering timely, personalized messaging that evolves with customer needs.
What is a Content Builder?
A content builder is a digital tool that simplifies creating and organizing content for websites, emails, and marketing campaigns. It allows users, with or without technical skills, to edit content in real-time and integrate it with campaigns like Playbook to address specific customer needs.
Project scope
End-to-end interface flow, testing and iterating
Role
Product, UX, UI Designer
(Research, Visual Design, Interaction Design, Usability Testing)
Tools
By 2020, Symend evolved to unify two separate platforms into one user-centric system
Current platforms challenges
1. User-Friendly Design without Coding
The platforms need content builders that are intuitive, negating the necessity for users to have coding expertise. This is crucial to ensure that a wider range of users can easily create and manage content without barriers.
2. Consistency Across Communication Channels
The design and functionality should remain consistent across all communication channels, allowing for a predictable user experience. This consistency helps users generate tailored content effectively, streamlining the customer engagement process.
Observing users interacting with the current platforms
By closely observing and collaborating with users, I gathered insights into their interactions with the previous content builder. Their feedback was instrumental in framing my observations and recommendations.
1. Optimizing Time Efficiency:
Time is a precious asset, and to elevate the user experience, we must streamline processes. By cutting down uncertainties and bottlenecks in designing email and SMS templates and treatment paths, we significantly boost productivity.
2. Enhanced Navigation and Speed:
Minor tweaks in the content creation process can lead to notable improvements in both navigating previous platforms, and expediting the creation and editing of templates and plans.
3. Incremental Changes, Monumental Outcomes
Subtle adjustments in the process can drastically refine the user experience, making content creation and management faster and more intuitive.
Based on the findings from user interviews , Cecile, the Content Designer was created as a key persona to design towards
Tasks and background:
Cecile oversees the Symend instance, a crucial platform in their organization, and holds significant responsibility due to their authoritative role.
Adjust Settings and Configuration for the Symend instance.
Handle general settings, data automation, integrations, and user permissions.
Ensure optimal platform performance and security.
Goals:
Independently manage Symend settings and configurations.
Maintain service quality and integrity for customers.
Stay updated on essential technical aspects.
Challenges:
Managing changes that could disrupt core functions.
Limited expertise in niche technical jargon.
Continuous updates and maintenance across various platform facets.
Example screens within the flow of creating content (SMS/ Text Messages) in the two previous platforms
Major concerns in the current user experiences
1. Naming Discrepancies
There's a lack of consistency between component names and their descriptions, making it challenging to understand specific acronyms, especially those highlighted in component names.
2. Formatting Challenges
Users are compelled to manually add break tags in the body text. Since the components don't inherently cater to this need, a basic understanding of HTML becomes essential for users.
3. Outdated User Interfaces
The content builder/editor experiences in the previous platforms felt antiquated, resulting in a less than ideal user experience. They miss out on essential features like personalized tags that clients find crucial. The latest of the two platforms made strides by enhancing the preview experience, offering a simulation of how customers view SMS on their mobile devices.
SMS/ Text message previews in the two previous platforms
Business priorities
1. Scalability towards self-service:
The former process for content creation was labor-intensive and inefficient, making it a challenge for users to visualize and understand the experience their customers would ultimately encounter.
2. Simplify and expedite content creation:
Design a content builder that emphasizes efficiency, simplifying the content creation process with intuitive features to facilitate quicker content production for users.
3. Embracing interactive customization:
The existing content builders were outdated and lacked flexibility, making them challenging for users to operate efficiently.
4. Error-reduction content creation:
Design a new content builder aimed at streamlining user workflows, reducing content creation errors by 50% within the first year of implementation.
Solution strategy to meet the business and user needs
Refine, automate, organize, enhance, and optimize content creation through:
1. Streamline features:
Refine component names, remove confusing features, and provide clear guides on template and plan creation for a better user experience.
2. Automated ease:
Integrate automatic spacing, acronym clarity, and error detection in components.
3. Structured organization:
Create clear hierarchies for templates and plans, supplemented with visual aids for component identification.
4. User-Centric enhancements:
Introduce auto-save functions, prioritize essential tools, and make key components easily accessible to speed up tasks.
5. Optimized layout:
Adjust the application's layout and menu structure to reduce reliance on search, enhancing navigation.
Leveraging familiarity from industry standards
Following an industry analysis on content builders, I integrated prevalent trends into our redesign, offering users a familiar and intuitive experience that does not necessitate learning processes from scratch.
Two main takeaways to implement:
1. Multi-view Layouts:
Content builders adopted split-screen or side-by-side views, allowing users to simultaneously design content and preview the end result.
2. Enhanced Widget Libraries:
With the increasing demand for dynamic content, there was a surge in expansive widget and component libraries for things like forms, pop-ups, and interactive elements, streamlining the design process.
Iterations
Insert content block panel variations
Strategic icon placement to help users anticipate the results of their actions
Real-time preview reflecting up-to-date content edits
Content preview and insert as well as layout panels
Auto-save feedback animations and label enhance user confidence through reassurance
Content blocks selection offers diverse features for custom content, with intuitive labels and icons for quick recognition.
The rich text editor allows users to insert personalized tags and links into the text message.
Content layout blocks use best practices by incorporating universally recognized icons.
Help text within the input provides additional context to guide users on system limitations.
The "preview and test" feature lets users replace tags with custom personalization values, view the text message, and send an actual test message using those values.
Users can toggle between the active draft and the published versions for comparison and review.
Final thoughts
Given more time and broader scope, I envision expanding on the interactive capabilities, like direct canvas manipulation and intuitive drag-and-drop functions. While there are areas to refine, like block rearrangement, I'm proud that, within our constraints, we've delivered a tool that enhances users' efficiency and empowerment.