Where am I?
I’m full on making social media awesome!
mLabs is an important tool for people who work with social media: planning, scheduling posts and managing different accounts at the same place and time.
In July 2016, I had the pleasure to be a part of mLabs’s team in order to design a new function, to optimize scheduled posts panel.
In July 2016, I had the pleasure to be a part of mLabs’s team in order to design a new function, to optimize scheduled posts panel.
My role
User interface designer. The need of optimizing the posts listing had been already identified in a survey.
That was the reason of my role being to define how would be the user interaction with that new feature, to draw the high fidelity mockups and to build a development guideline.
That was the reason of my role being to define how would be the user interaction with that new feature, to draw the high fidelity mockups and to build a development guideline.
Problem
The visualization of the scheduled posts wasn’t clear enough, what caused a lot of trouble for many users.
By only being able to view the panel as a chart, it wasn’t possible to see the bigger picture and that would bring problems of interpretation on the dates that the posts would be posted and duplicity of posts.
Those were real issues if you consider that the reason the platform exists is to make the user’s lives easier.
Those were real issues if you consider that the reason the platform exists is to make the user’s lives easier.
Limitations
To modify without losing the platform’s personality mLabs operates on a 700 active users base, what means that it has a predefined design structure that could not be compromised.
The challenge was to adapt, to simplify and to make the posts panel more intuitive, all of that while keeping the other platform functions running smoothly.
The challenge was to adapt, to simplify and to make the posts panel more intuitive, all of that while keeping the other platform functions running smoothly.
Audience
B2B. From small to medium sized customers. By offering a service that helps the work on social media, mLabs works mainly with advertising agencies.
Solution
Aiming to facilitate the visualization of the posts and offering a more broadening view on the dates, we agreed on a very classic format: calendar.
We started with the notion that the new view would have to be capable of optimizing the user’s time, helping with the feature understanding. Therefore we tried on different ways of showing the posts content and created a content priorization matrix to display only what is most relevant.
After many rounds brainstorming and wireframing, I was the responsible for creating the high fidelity mockups that went to production and will be validated by tests with mLabs’s users base.
After many rounds brainstorming and wireframing, I was the responsible for creating the high fidelity mockups that went to production and will be validated by tests with mLabs’s users base.
Conclusion
Many times the solution is in simplicity. Starting with a user experience problem, we were able to find a solution that does not require that the user learns a whole new process. We solved the issue by offering an interaction model that everybody is acquainted with from using calendar software.
With a simple solution, we were able to deliver a huge value to users without causing a negative impact on our development roadmap.
After all, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
With a simple solution, we were able to deliver a huge value to users without causing a negative impact on our development roadmap.
After all, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.