Team structure
Product Owner & Designer (Yup that's me!) | Front End Developer I Back End Developer | Client
My role as a Product Owner
Requirement gathering from client to understand their needs.
Defining project timelines for both design and development for each module seperately.
Drafting project brief document that will act as the source of truth during the entire course of project.
Ensured accurate project billing by meticulously documenting details, due dates, and amounts in a dedicated spreadsheet.
Coordinated timely design and UAT review calls with the client to ensure project milestones were met.
Facilitated daily stand-ups to address blockers, review designs, and foster a positive team culture.
My role as a Product Designer
Organized complex client requirements into logical modules, saving my developer's time and effort.
Conducted user interviews with key stakeholders (admins, account managers, talent managers, brands, and influencers) to gain deep insights into their needs and pain points.
Curated a mini design system inside Figma utilising Tailwind CSS framework guidelines for fundamental components.
Defining local variables with appropriate design tokens inside Figma.
Co-ordinating with front end developer to make sure design system component libraries are identical in dev environment.
Creating Visual designs for various UI flows and shared end-to-end prototype with developers for tech-feasibility check.
Shared internally approved clickable prototype links for client review.
Facilitated design feedback sessions with client to address their queries.
Usability testing with key stakeholders (admins, account managers, talent managers, brands, and influencers) as they logged in to their profiles.
Client
Digiwhistle
Project timeline
Jun 2024 - Dec 2024
Industry
Marketing and Advertising
Tools used
Why did I do this project ?
Because I wanted to learn how things are done from scratch, how a product is built when client gives you nothing but a piece of paper and you need to extract and figure out their hidden requirements.
Design for me is more than opening Figma and making UI and this project had all the challenges that I was looking for and obviously key ingredient were my teammates who owned their game in coding and I owned mine in design and project management. So there was no hand-holding, lots of learning, more productivity and freedom in our small team (and obviously earning as well).
Project brief shared by client
2 page document with hidden requirements, no timelines and lots of ambiguity.
Project brief shared by my team
After innumerous internal team calls, and client discussions we figured out many hidden requirements that had a significant impact on project timeline and overall billing as requirement kept rising.
This entire process took us almost a month.
Internal tracking of work
It was my task to break down each module of the PRD into multiple touchpoints to improve tracking and transparency regarding the overall project progress for the client.
Below is one example of landing screen flow, likewise we did the same for all the UI flows:
Did the timeline prove to be helpful?
In the beginning, this timeline really helped us in getting started from 0 to 1.
However as things progressed we had to switch gears and beyond campaign management UI flow we had to make these timelines more dynamic because client requested us to show everything once it's done so they can check it end to end.
But to even get to that stage, we needed a solid foundation which the timelines provided us in the initial stages.
Understanding our users
Separate user interview sessions with each of my users i.e. Admin, Account, Talent Manager, Brand and Influencer.
I collated my findings and also shared session recording with my team for future reference.
Understanding client's business
Digiwhistle is an influencer marketing agency that helps brands run online ad campaigns on various social media platforms through its extensive network of influencers.
They have a dedicated team of 20+ employees, 40+ influencers helping brands such as payTM, CRED, HDFC Bank, Airtel and many more. In Dec 2024 they will reach annual turnover of over INR 5 Crores as confirmed by the CEO.
Now you must be thinking…
Why would brands pay 20% commission to Digiwhistle and influencers bear 20% paycut in every deal, right ?
Wrong! because big agencies like Digiwhistle provide:
Access to genuine influencers with authentic followers.
Talent manager who ensures compliance & smooth deal execution.
Prevents fraudulent activities and ensures campaign effectiveness.
Trust as agencies are Govt. certified with proper GST number and validation.
Assured deals on a monthly basis to influencers which generates income on a regular basis for them.
Reliance to influencers because individually closing brand deals is a tough task to do on a consistent basis.
How can I help them ?
I requested them to walk me through their current processes as I kept taking notes. Below are my key findings:
Fundamental components
Colours
Primary, secondary, tertiary, functional, and text colour palettes.
Spacers
Helps maintain consistent spacing and layout across different elements, components and pages in an interface.
Icons
We used Heroicons library icon set for this project.
Token library
This was essentially the backbone of our design system.
Major challenges we faced:
So you have to understand that I had a background working with MNCs where everything is organized as you have:
Client partner who is taking care of billing and timesheets,
Project managers who is taking care of writing JIRA stories and take walkthrough calls with the entire team.
Scrum master who arranges regular standups.
QA team to perform testing.
Dev team to translate designs into code.
And I was this guy in the team, who's taking care of design processes and sharing them with relevant stakeholders, that's about it man!
In this project, there was no formal structure because my client was no MNC, it was a startup with zero setup, processes and obviously low budget.
Here the biggest challenge was to understand client's requirements to perform crucial tasks for my team such as:
Drafting project brief documentation setting correct expectations with the client.
Setting project estimates with defined timelines and deliverables.
Conducting daily standups to discuss progress, blockers and next tasks.
Sharing billing spreadsheet with client and my team for tracking purpose.
As a designer this was my first time doing all of these activities, and it was definitely challenging and fun.
Also another major challenge was working with a client from non-tech background who many a times failed to understand the technical limitations or processes of things that we were doing. This required additional effort and time because this was also my first time working with a client like this.
How did I overcome this challenge ?
My experience working with MNC proved so much helpful here as I previously worked with global brands such as Citibank, Unilever, Albertsons & companies across multiple industry verticals in huge team structures.
So when this project came up, I knew I could manage chaos really well because I already knew the formal process.
Our Design Presentation Process
Sharing quick design walkthrough call recordings with client alongwith clickable protoype worked wonders for us.
Some explorations we did!
Based on my discussions with the client so far, I already had a rough idea of the client's expectations and the project's requirements. Rest validation was done by creating and showing the designs to the client for approval.
PS: Content was majorly drafted utilising existing website's content, gemini.ai with some human intervention.
Client preferred Design Op 03
"Hamari industry mei jo dikhta hai wohi bikta hai"
Yup that's what client said during one of the interview sessions and that's what they saw in option 03.
Client's feedback on our designs
"Ankit, let's do landing page designs later on, can we directly skip to Payroll designs first… ?"
That is just one instance, but we faced many more feedbacks like these during the course of the project.
Other VDs at a glance
Showcasing responsive UI designs of other flows that we completed in this project.
20+
Digiwhistle employees
200+
Diverse Brands
300+
Content creators
1000+
Brand campaigns
B2C Ai Web application | Consumer products
