Transforming Campaign Management
From 20+ spreadsheets to unified workflow tools — How I redesigned BrightLocal's campaign management system to eliminate manual workarounds and boost team productivity by 88%
Project Timeline
18 weeks
Team Impact
100% adoption
Efficiency Gain
88% reduction
Role
Solo Designer
Project Timeline
18 weeks
Team Impact
100% adoption
Efficiency Gain
88% reduction
Role
Solo Designer
Problem
Problem
BrightLocal's remote team of citation submission agents in the Philippines were bypassing existing internal tools and instead relying on over 20 different spreadsheets to manually manage their submission campaigns.
While these workarounds showed team innovation, they were creating significant business challenges:
Time-consuming & Error-prone
Manual processes leading to human errors and inefficiency
Poor Collaboration
Inefficient cross-team communication and visibility
Business Impact
Reduced productivity and profitability
"We need to understand why agents are avoiding these tools"
- CEO
Design Process
Design Process
Using the double diamond methodology, I explored the problem space through research and discovery, defined the key user needs, generated multiple solution concepts through design, and refined the final design through iterative testing.
Research & Discovery
Usability reviews of existing tools
8 user interviews (Philippines team)
Affinity mapping & priority matrix
UX benchmarking analysis
Ideation & Design
Crazy 8's ideation sessions
Wireframing in Figjam
High-fidelity prototyping
Interactive design system
Testing & Iteration
Remote usability testing
Stakeholder presentations
CloudFlare analytics review
Post-launch optimisation
Research & Discovery
Usability reviews of existing tools
8 user interviews (Philippines team)
Affinity mapping & priority matrix
UX benchmarking analysis
Ideation & Design
Crazy 8's ideation sessions
Wireframing in Figjam
High-fidelity prototyping
Interactive design system
Testing & Iteration
Remote usability testing
Stakeholder presentations
CloudFlare analytics review
Post-launch optimisation
Research & Discovery
Research & Discovery
Below are some of the respective activities that I carried out as part of the design process and why as well as the insights uncovered.
Usability Review
To identify current pain points of the tools and opportunities for improvement.
Usability Review
To identify current pain points of the tools and opportunities for improvement.
Affinity Mapping
To synthesise research insights by grouping what could be kept, removed, added or improved.
Affinity Mapping
To synthesise research insights by grouping what could be kept, removed, added or improved.
Primary Frustration: Speed
User interviews revealed that the tools were very slow to load ~5 seconds on average, which is unacceptable for agents trying to work efficiently
Secondary: Usability Issues
Abbreviations and colour coding was often misunderstood and there was a lack of flexibility in surfacing priority or duplicate campaigns quickly and easily
UX Benchmarking
By taking inspiration from other popular productivity tools, I built a picture of best practices and different approaches the product could take.
UX Benchmarking
By taking inspiration from other popular productivity tools, I built a picture of best practices and different approaches the product could take.
Priority Matrix
I then mapped these potential avenues on a priority matrix to understand how to balance desirability, feasibility and viability.
Priority Matrix
I then mapped these potential avenues on a priority matrix to understand how to balance desirability, feasibility and viability.
Solution Overview
One faster, consolidated tool with more powerful filtering functionality.
1. Campaign Tracker
Priority-ordered and tagged campaigns
Ability to assign campaigns to agents
Real-time status updates
2. Kanban Board
Pipedrive-inspired card interface
Drag-and-drop functionality
Visual workflow management
After some series of crazy 8's followed by wireframing, I created high fidelity prototypes on Figma and after several rounds of feedback and iteration with users, stakeholders and engineers, the mockups were prepared for hand-off.
A month after launch, whilst the Campaign Tracker had been fully adopted, Cloudflare Analytics revealed that the new Kanban Board had not and the team were still using spreadsheets for certain tasks.
I therefore carried out a quick-fire round of user interviews and came to understand that an improved filter for multi-campaigns and managers would help the adoption curve.
Key Design Changes
Added filter for multi-campaigns to both tools
Added filter for managers to both tools
Results & Impact
88%
Campaign Tracker
From 20+ spreadsheets to just 2
100%
Adoption
By the Philippines team
Business Impact
Increased profitability & efficiency
Quantitative Success
88% reduction in spreadsheet usage (from 20+ to 2)
100% tool adoption by the Philippines team
Significant time savings per campaign management cycle
Qualitative Impact
Eliminated human error from manual spreadsheet management
Improved cross-team visibility into campaign status
Enhanced agent productivity and job satisfaction
Increased business profitability through operational efficiency
"The new tools are much faster and really easy to use"
- Agent, Philippines Team
"At last they have stopped using all of those spreadsheets and long workarounds that didn't make sense"
- Citations Operations Manager, UK Team
Key Learnings
User research
The importance of inclusive research practises
Workarounds
Importance of user-centered design over feature-driven design
Impact of UX
Thoughtful, user-centered design directly translates to measurable business outcomes
Next steps
As next steps, we begun to look at campaign assignment and were able to reuse the designs from the Kanban Board for an MVP launch of assigning campaigns to agents. The designs are still currently in sprint but are forecast to save
Key Research Insights
Primary Frustration: Speed
User interviews revealed that the tools were very slow to load ~5 seconds on average, which is unacceptable for agents trying to work efficiently
Secondary: Usability Issues
Abbreviations and colour coding was often misunderstood and there was a lack of flexibility in surfacing priority or duplicate campaigns quickly and easily
UX Benchmarking
By taking inspiration from other popular productivity tools, I built a picture of best practices and different approaches the product could take.
Priority Matrix
I then mapped these potential avenues on a priority matrix to understand how to balance desirability, feasibility and viability.
Solution Overview
One faster, consolidated tool with more powerful filtering functionality.
1. Campaign Tracker
Priority-ordered and tagged campaigns
Ability to assign campaigns to agents
Real-time status updates
2. Kanban Board
Pipedrive-inspired card interface
Drag-and-drop functionality
Visual workflow management
After some series of crazy 8's followed by wireframing, I created high fidelity prototypes on Figma and after several rounds of feedback and iteration with users, stakeholders and engineers, the mockups were prepared for hand-off.
A month after launch, whilst the Campaign Tracker had been fully adopted, Cloudflare Analytics revealed that the new Kanban Board had not and the team were still using spreadsheets for certain tasks.
I therefore carried out a quick-fire round of user interviews and came to understand that an improved filter for multi-campaigns and managers would help the adoption curve.
Key Design Changes
Added filter for multi-campaigns to both tools
Added filter for managers to both tools
Results & Impact
88%
Campaign Tracker
From 20+ spreadsheets to just 2
100%
Adoption
By the Philippines team
Business Impact
Increased profitability & efficiency
Quantitative Success
88% reduction in spreadsheet usage (from 20+ to 2)
100% tool adoption by the Philippines team
Significant time savings per campaign management cycle
Qualitative Impact
Eliminated human error from manual spreadsheet management
Improved cross-team visibility into campaign status
Enhanced agent productivity and job satisfaction
Increased business profitability through operational efficiency
"The new tools are much faster and really easy to use"
- Agent, Philippines Team
"At last they have stopped using all of those spreadsheets and long workarounds that didn't make sense"
- Citations Operations Manager, UK Team
Key Learnings
User research
The importance of inclusive research practises
Workarounds
Importance of user-centered design over feature-driven design
Impact of UX
Thoughtful, user-centered design directly translates to measurable business outcomes
Next steps
As next steps, we begun to look at campaign assignment and were able to reuse the designs from the Kanban Board for an MVP launch of assigning campaigns to agents. The designs are still currently in sprint but are forecast to save