Help users identify top engagement points within the Samsung ecosystem, enabling audience exploration, reporting, activation, and media planning on the Samsung DSP.
Design Lead and Management, UX strategy, User research, UI design , Interaction design
2023 - 2024
Audience Insights is an essential component of an advertiser's journey to reaching the right audiences at the right time. It equips users with tools to profile relevant audiences and discover new, untapped segments within their target demographic. Additionally, it offers customizable views, downloadable reports, and the ability to activate key audience attributes.
Client Solution Manager (CSM): Advocating for products, guiding clients while delivering excellent end-to-end campaign support.
Account Executive (Seller): Build relationships with advertisers and MSA clients, provide campaign consultation, and make sales to drive revenue.
Working closely with UX researchers, discovery research was conducted to understand user needs, behaviors, and use cases, which guided the initial phase of our design solution. Usability testing then helped us validate our design decisions and clarify pain points and workflow challenges. This process revealed:
To ensure timely design delivery at every stage, I led a team of four designers and one researcher throughout the project. I structured the user journey into three major workflows: Create Insights, Analyze Insights, and Activate New Audiences, defining tasks within each. As the design lead, I assigned specific responsibilities, facilitated brainstorming sessions and workshops to generate ideas and encourage teamwork, and conducted frequent one-on-one meetings to guide designers in refining their work. I also kept consistent communication with the product manager and engineers to align on business and technical requirements, collaboratively solve design challenges, and share progress with stakeholders.
To streamline navigation, the design decision is to use a tabular approach for the insight categories. By displaying all available categories as tabs, users can easily switch between sections. The customization tool in the left column features pill buttons that correspond to these tabs. Enabling or disabling a pill button will show or hide the respective tab on the page. This clearly links the customization options with the displayed insight content, helping users understand their relationship and how to use them.
In this insight report, data visualization is key. We focused on designing presentations that are engaging but not overwhelming, allowing users to understand the information and make informed decisions easily. To achieve this, we carefully selected chart types and crafted color schemes. For consistency with Samsung product images, we used Samsung’s branding colors across graphs and charts. I worked closely with the visual designer to ensure the charts were visually consistent yet distinct. For data comparisons, we introduced another set of similar-toned colors. This approach provides clear visual meaning and makes the presentation both vivid and understandable.
Users requested the ability to select multiple audience segments in the report settings. However, clearly displaying these selections across different sections and pages proved difficult. To resolve this, the design adopted a familiar online shopping approach by introducing a “shopping cart” column that stores selected items from various locations. This offers an intuitive and recognizable user experience, making the selection process straightforward and effortless.
After launching the product and receiving positive feedback, we also identified several user pain points. While Audience Insights offers a wealth of information, many users feel overwhelmed and uncertain about the next steps. Additionally, the need to load all insight report categories causes performance latency, negatively impacting user experience.
To address these challenges, we focused on users' core needs by delivering curated insights tailored to them. Using new research, we identified users’ main questions and redesigned our reports to provide clear, simple answers. To improve comprehension, I introduced a storytelling approach: reports are structured as a sequence of questions, from broad to detailed. Each question has its own section featuring explanations, visualizations, and tables, guiding users to read the data, understand the details, and act on recommendations. This structure was first implemented in the next Audience Insights application, Optimal Reach Insights.
The insight reports rely on extensive data visualizations. While designing various graphs and charts, I initiated a side project to transform these elements into reusable Figma components for our design system. Collaborating with the prototyper, we gathered user cases, defined goals, set requirements, and brainstormed ideas. Through exploration, testing, and iteration, we created reusable assets that now support the team and streamline future projects.
In this project, user feedback is crucial for shaping and refining our product and design solutions. I’ve seen that users’ needs and expectations change as the product matures. Once they interact with the implementation, their understanding of what they want and need becomes clearer—a sentiment echoed by Steve Jobs: “A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.” Designers should focus on the users’ core needs and challenges. When collaborating with researchers, asking insightful questions and interpreting users’ responses accurately is critical. By putting ourselves in the users’ shoes, we can think more deeply and anticipate their needs, as Steve Jobs famously said, “Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.”