Digital Transformation: Automating Trend Curation
Timeline: 15 days/120 hours | Role: Solo Product Designer
Solution
Automated digital curation: Usability for the user and transparency for the business
Design of a trend and content curation platform through digital transformation, which included:
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Simplified flow for intuitive user navigation
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Automated generation of trends and personalized content suggestions, requiring no human intermediation
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Admin profile for the business, focused on visibility and transparency of tool usage by users
Problem
A future-focused service stuck in the past
IEL offered a trend curation service to guide companies in making strategic decisions for short- and long-term results. However, this was still done on paper, which:
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Consumed significant time and personnel for data cross-referencing
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Did not align with the company’s innovative positioning
With this in mind, they decided to undergo a digital transformation of the service, moving trend generation to a digital platform and planning for future scalability into a subscription-based system for interested companies.
Research and requirements gathering
From guided service to self-managed experience: Defining priorities
With the main goal in mind, several meetings were held with stakeholders to better understand how the current service worked and how it could be translated into a digital context without direct mediation, as was the case with the current consultancy model.
This allowed us to outline minimum requirements for the first version of the platform. For the MVP, it was important that:
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The platform be easy for users to understand, as the entire process would be autonomous.
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There be an area for subscription management by the user.
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IEL have a way to manage content and track user usage data to measure the platform’s success.
Information architecture
Structuring the experience for different user profiles
With the requirements defined, I structured all the content the platform should include, leading to a primary division into three profiles: Company user, Company admin user, and IEL admin.
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For company users, the global view remained the same but with some permission changes. Overall, the new user flow introduced clear and concise text to guide users more precisely within the platform, along with the addition of filter suggestions and recommendations based on user behavior within the product.
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For IEL, the structure was entirely business-focused, emphasizing: company and user management, addition and editing of general content (from trends to suggested content). Considering the need to track the progress of the new product, the homepage was designed as a dashboard for quick and interactive viewing with filters.
Final Result
Delivered Solution
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
The challenge of digital transformation
Digital transformation can be challenging, especially when reinventing an in-person, manual, and personalized service into something entirely digital, requiring no intermediation. This process demands extensive scenario analysis to bring clarity and simplicity to the digital space, making user navigation easier. This aspect also becomes the key differentiator in determining the success or failure of the business transition, making it a delicate endeavor.
Next steps:
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The first phase is currently in testing. Depending on user acceptance and positive feedback, there are plans to scale the product to operate on a subscription-based system. This will require additional attention and adaptations to the way the platform is viewed and the experiences it offers.
