Steering Apptimize on
the right path for aquisition
Apptimize, an Airship Company, enables brands to rapidly improve user experiences across all digital channels through mobile-first A/B testing and feature release management.
As a mobile-focused company, Apptimize excels at moving quickly, tackling complex engineering challenges, and prioritizing unique user experiences.
Apptimize
Principal UX/UI Designer
Apptimize.com
Apptimize's goal from the time I started was to be aquired. Apptimize was aquired by Airship in 2019 and I am grateful that I was apart of the process.
Overview
Apptimize's offering at the time was designed and built mainly by non designers and offshore teams which led to issues with usability, visual appeal, user satisfaction, and an overall suboptimal user experience.
To start the research phase for Teradata Vantage we developed our own research methods by leveraging our team's prior experiences and the latest best practices. This helped guide us in ensuring that the design would meet modern business and customer needs with flexibility and scalability.
To ensure a thorough understanding of the problem statement, I reviewed prior
research, conducted my own research, created task flows, and rough
page layouts. I then began the ideation process on paper or a whiteboard.
This allowed for a more tangible exploration of potential solutions as
well as the ability to refine and iterate quickly before moving onto more
detailed digital design tools.
Once I believed the idea was viable, I then brought in the development leads
to reconcile legacy, performance, and usability trade-offs.
This increased efficiency by quickly learning what will and will not work before
building an interactive prototype. Additionally it gave a sense of UX process
inclusion to the rest of the teams.
After the research phase, we focused on designing Teradata Vantage to be lean and user-friendly while integrating advanced analytics and multi-cloud capabilities. We ensured an intuitive interface and seamless user experience, refining features through iterative testing and stakeholder feedback to meet diverse business needs.
Throughout the process, my goal was to balance functionality and simplicity while creating an experience that fostered user trust and confidence in their financial decisions.
Additionally, the market for automated investment services is very competitive so the UX had to clearly differentiate itself and convey superior value.
During the ideation and sketching phase of the design sprint
I shifted my focus to rapid interactive prototyping. An instance of this
is demonstrated by this mid-fidelity prototype created in Axure at the
time for Apptimize's Feature Flagging feature release.
Rapid prototyping enabled me to showcase my rough design ideas and taskflows
to stakeholders and get universal buy in.
After stakeholder buy in I wrote user test scripts, ran pilot
tests to rehearse timing, and double check for any technical
issues.
Once internally validated, I was fortunate to run moderated
tests in the wild with new and existing customers from Trulia,
Flipagram, Hotels Tonight, Busuu, and many more.
This gave me valuable data which I distilled to glean insights into what was and
wasn't working and share the findings with the teams.
This data and insights ensured that both business and user
needs where being met in the best possible way.
One major customer pain point for Apptimize was the experiment dashboard.
Users had to navigate to the results page by clicking/tapping on each experiment,
leading to significant time wastage.
Furthermore, experiment discoverability and organization were inadequate, resulting
in high cognitive overhead and frustration.
To improve the experiment dashboard, I made experiment containers expandable, added
search and robust filtering, created clear column labels for tertiary
navigation, and removed grey backgrounds on experiment containers.
These changes resulted in a cleaner page with better organization and
discoverability that existing customers often complimented.
(Laptop Before - Desktop After)
One of my initial assignments was collaborating with the
marketing team to redesign their landing page. My objectives
were threefold. Firstly, to resolve significant usability issues
that arose when the page was viewed on smaller devices. Secondly,
to enhance user engagement by utilizing CSS3 transition effects.
Finally, to establish a cohesive design that aligned with
Apptimize's voice and tone.
(Laptop Before - Desktop After)
Apptimize Takeaways
Working with Apptimze was challenging but by implementing many of the solutions we were able to significantly improve the offering's user experience, usability, and customer satisfaction over a short period of time. Redesigning many of the visuals, flows, and feature additions such as Feature Flagging was instrumental for Apptimize's success.
