Designing for designers

In Fall 2019, I had the amazing opportunity to work for ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut as a Product Design intern. I worked alongside senior designers and had the opportunity to work on my own project as the sole design intern in the organization. 

The project I worked on was an asset management tool to help make finding and uploading  assets such as team logos, colors and head shots an easier experience than the current systems. This tool could make a process that would normally take up to 8 hours reduced to just 20 seconds. 

Investigation

To get a better idea of what users would need, I sought out to do unstructured interviews and contextual inquiry on the current tools they use, and see how they use them. Each current tool was looked at in depth, with some of the tool’s UIs not being updated since they were first created in the late 90s. I also met with developers and the TV team to see how the tools were being used with technology to make logos appear on screens.

Research Questions

• How can we make their process more efficient?

• What do our users need to complete their tasks?

• What content do our users need to work with?

Who uses creative assets?

I compiled all my findings in the form of personas, outlined with the goals and frustrations each team had. Since this was a tool to be used internally, my personas were reflective of specific people of various positions who would need to access assets. These include users from the content design team, product design and TV production team.

• Product Design and UX Team

• Content Design Team

• TV Production Team

Current Tools

Each current tool was looked at in depth, with some of the tool’s UIs not being updated since they were first created in the late 90s. I also met with developers and the TV team to see how the tools were being used with technology to make logos appear on screens.

Issues

• Current systems are unclear and difficult to navigate

  • One interviewee said “Once I upload something, I have no idea where it goes to or if it even uploads [on all the services it is being hosted on”.

  • Inefficient navigation, some tech require multiple nested drop-down

  • Lacking visual previews

• Process requires excessive steps and multiple software to get the same content and perform the same action

  • Users mentioned using multiple software just to do a single action, like uploading.

  • Takes time to format or find the correct embedded HTML for an asset to put on a service.

• Content has little to no context or is disorganized

  • Interviewees mentioned not knowing if a file is the latest version or outdated.

Task Flows

After interviewing various members of the teams, I got a better idea of their workflow and visualized the workflows in the form of task flow charts. These would help in understanding the current process and the pain points these users have with the existing tools. These task flows would serve as a good basis for measuring whether the tool was to be more efficient or not.

Iteration

When creating a possible solution, I had to brainstorm and account for the different workflows and figure out what all the users needed in common.

Design Requirements

• Navigation

  • Most efficient way to present content so users don’t have to keep clicking through different categories

• Filtering

  • How to categorize all the content so users aren’t overloaded and can find what they need easily

• Display

  • Having a clean and modern UI that aligns with Direct-To-Consumer International branding and tools
    Keeping track of updates and edits

• User Needs

  • Allowing users an easier way to copy and paste URLs, seeing what logos look like on other colors, sizes and download buttons
    Having a way to edit and make updates to content and archiving old content

• Assets

  • Organizational structure and Taxonomy
    Content more than just logos + colors, images or applications outside ESPN
    

Solution

After the first feedback session, I made changes to the UI to reflect their workflow and fit various needs. The visual design was made to be based off various internal software such as Confluence and Dropbox. The styling was kept neutral, in case the tool were to be expanded to fit the needs of the other Direct-to-Consumer International brands under the Walt Disney Company.