Global Media, the client
Global, recognised as the UK and Europe's largest Radio & Outdoor company, hosts a prestigious lineup of the nation's favorite radio stations, including Heart, Capital, LBC, Classic FM, Smooth, Radio X, and Gold. Going beyond radio, the company extends its influence into outdoor advertising, firmly establishing itself as a key player in the industry.
Project Brief: The project aimed to make things simpler for Global’s existing and new customers. The goal was to set up a user-friendly ad platform, making it easy for them to buy radio outdoor advertising services.
Project Overview: I designed a self-service platform to enable users to easily purchase a range of Global products, including advertising in digital and classic outdoors, as well as radio.
Project Outcome: This project will be presented to TFL (Transport for London) in November 2024, allowing Global to secure their advertising services across London tube services for the next 10 years.
Project Type: Mobile and Desktop web app
Team: Lead Designer
Duration: March 2023 - Present
Initial Problem Discovery
What problem are we trying to solve?
“An easy way for our existing and new customers to quickly purchase any Global product, with full control, to help grow their business.”
Global encounters numerous frustrations when dealing with the advertising booking system. Customer frustrations include a lack of understanding of their offers and products. Time-related frustrations involve feedback taking too long. Growth-related frustrations encompass client base expansion and increased stability. Cost and manual labor frustrations directly impact innovation, campaign success rates, and campaign visibility.
Global is the leading outdoor media company in the UK and one of the largest in Europe, boasting an extensive portfolio of over 253,000 sites. Its outdoor inventory reaches over 95% of the UK population and beyond. However, the current process of booking advertisements through phone calls causes inefficiencies and delays in the workflow.
Value Proposition
How do we create value for customers?
“We aim to understand customer needs and tailor our products accordingly. Effective value propositions directly address key customer needs and benefits.”
And how do we create value for the business?
Initial Research / Problem Validation
Why is this problem important?
“We want our customers satisfied, and most importantly, we want our small to medium-sized companies to come back”
Global currently relies on phone calls to book advertisements within their products. In this day and age, Global needs to modernise, not only to align with customers' digital experiences but also to deliver a more efficient and quick service. Global aims to reach small to medium-sized companies that may perceive advertising in certain areas as out of their reach. The goal is to extend their services to diverse audiences, ensuring accessibility and convenience in the advertising process.
Undertanding the audience
Whose problem am I solving?
“With Global currently takes too long because I have to interact with a person and wait for their engagement, which makes me feel frustrated that I can't target my customers in my usual way.”
Our target audience is small to medium-sized companies who are not familiar with the advertisement industry. Global is aware of the slow current booking service and the potential reach of the self-service platform, but they're not willing to spend time and money on prior research to optimise their advertising efforts.
Problem/Opportunities spaces
How am I going to address the problem spaces in my designs?
Global is concerned about time and believes that working with hypotheses for now is the best approach. They have worked on a self-service platform that clearly shows a lack of accessibility and UI design principles. Their internal design system hasn't been designed with external users in mind, so using the existing components will not only offer a poor experience to end users due to the poor accessibility but will also give the platform an outdated look.
Problem #1: Previous work
I improved a prototype for Global by addressing common usability issues and proposing solutions. This involved creating an accessible product, enhancing branding, improving product discovery, minimising errors, and streamlining navigation.
Problem #2: Research
Although I presented a detailed Research Plan, including budget, time, and methods, Global decided they only wanted to work with the assumptions and user personas we created through our discovery workshops.
Problem #3: Design system
Global wanted to start building the platform without creating a new design system, neglecting the needs of new users. Their vision should have shaped the designs, and new branding, color palette, and UI components were crucial. They planned to use internal components for external users without considering accessibility.
I suggested tweaking the existing components to enhance the UI by increasing padding margins, adjusting font weights, and border radius. Global agreed to create a new library of components for My Global Ads, where they could reuse the existing ones.
By making just a few design element changes, I improved the experience, making it accessible and visually aligned with core design principles.
Previous components
Updated compoments
Project releases
How are we going to begin designing the experience?
It was decided that the platform would be built in different releases, with features implemented in a set of capability pillars (also called Releases) aligned with the user journey. The platform wasn't going to be built in a sequential order, which posed another challenge for me as Global's priority wasn't building an end-to-end experience that aligned with the user journey.
#1 Customer profile
#2 Creative
#3 Payment
#4 Planning
I’ve also optimised the experience for mobile, even though it wasn't Global's priority at first.
Next steps
What happens now?
My Global Ads MVP will be ready by the end of the year, at which point Global will be prepared to present the proposal to Transport for London (TFL) so that they can continue displaying advertisements in all London transport stations and services. This update in the way Global offers its services is crucial not only to maintain the TFL service but also to modernise their system and align with contemporary commercial standards. At the time I left the project, Global and xDesign were ready to start working on Release 0.5, 'Manage Campaign'. Although I created an end-to-end prototype of the entire experience to understand the user journey comprehensively, each release will involve different requieremetns and components. I was very fortunate to be part of this revolutionary project, where I led the project from the beginning and made important decisions that were well-received by Global's stakeholders. I believe I made an impact on how the project was initially conceived; Global embraced UX and considered important factors that were previously overlooked.