With the increase in demand for turnkey solutions for digital promotions, Realtime Media aimed towards entering into the self-serve space. I was assigned the project to turn the current full-serve business model into a product that can be used by clients ranging from individual freelancers to large-scale corporations.
Creating a solid foundation for the platform was essential as we wanted to include only necessary features for the MVP and then build upon that. This would ensure any future updates wouldn’t be costly on development time.
Since this was a fairly large product, I divided the project into five different sections. This ensured that there would be a straight-forward hierarchy to the app which in turn would improve the user-experience through simplified navigation and heuristic design.
The user would enter through the Marketing Site where they would be educated about the business. After conversion, the Authentication would be the gateway into product.
After logging in, the user would enter into the Dashboard where all their promotions are listed. Each promotion has a Control Panel. From there, the user can access the Designer.
This model proved to be the simplest and most direct way into a promotion and its settings when compared with competitors. It also allows the addition of extra modules that can be implemented into each section without breaking the design system.
Since this product had to be inclusive to multiple client types, I created a hierarchy of user access options through the knowledge of RTM’s current clientele.
The model nests each Promotion into a Brand, which is operated under a Company. Users have to join an existing Company or create their own. Owners and Managers can have control over how editing privileges are distributed.
Structuring the permissions in this manner also allows us to leverage the features that are available in the lower tier of the SaaS plans.
This was one of the trickiest parts of the project as we wanted this product to be large enough for an organization to utilize, but also accessible enough for an individual to use.
The most complex part of the product by far was the Designer and the challenges of creating guardrails to make each promotion look good without limiting the user.
Splitting the Control Panel and the Dashboard solved a lot of problems. However, there were still plenty of settings that a user had to interact with in the Designer.
In the Designer, I created a holistic experience that includes the visual and data editing capabilities of each element in every page. The Sidebar module allows Components to be toggled on and off. The Styler allows each Element on there to be designed and edited.
The structure of these sections in the Sidebar and Styler, was thoughtfully built with reusable components in mind. More settings can be added in future updates without ever breaking or overwhelming the design.
