A design strategy & vision
How I helped increase user engagement for Hootsuite mobile.
The challenge
Trusted by more than 18 million customers, Hootsuite enables social media managers to publish and send more than 4 million social media posts every week.
The mobile app however lacked clarity on its business value. The team was seen as a cost sink rather than a revenue driver, and product leadership was keen to change that. They shifted from an acquisition to a retention strategy for paying customers, but the question was “how?” Who are these paying customers and what do they value?
That’s where I came in to help. I initiated a design vision based on prior user research to share what an experience could look like that would increase user retention.
My role
Over the course of more than a year, as side of desk work, I partnered with:
Two product managers and the director of product for mobile
Engineering leads and their senior manager
Two intermediate designers, who I mentored and guided in their day-to-day.
I also consulted with the wider design team and the user research team for their feedback and expertise
Approach
While no one was asking for a design vision, I saw the opportunity to create one to clarify the customer and their needs in tangible, visual ways, enabling the team to see and plan for concrete retention opportunities. I used a variety of inputs, including prior user research, stakeholder feedback, usage data, and a competitive analysis to shape the experience vision.
I also:
Led journey-mapping and feasibility checks workshops with the whole team
Outlined opportunity areas for ideation, working with the other designers
Developed and tested an IA, design principles, and core design concepts
Results
Despite a few pivots, the design vision resulted in:
Two releases: one shipped in June 2021 and the second in November 2021 resulting in a 60% lift in paying user engagement (10 sessions per week per user to 16 sessions per week).
A positive uptick in app store reviews
Shaped the immediate roadmap and longer term plans.
Convinced product to adjust the North Star metric, to reflect true user value.
I am most proud of how I helped a team from that went from UX avoidant to UX ally! ✨
Keep reading if you’d like to see a little more of my process below. 👇
“Checking in” is what Hootsuite mobile users value in the app
“Checking-in” means target — paying — customers use Hootsuite mobile as a consumption experience, supporting them in their in-between moments of productive work on their desktop or laptop.
This is the top takeaway from prior research, where I conducted a mixed-method study that included a survey, user interviews, and a concept test. I found a similar theme when I reviewed NPS comments, Sales’ closed-lost notes, and support tickets.
Here are the research insights presentations I shared with the team: user interviews & concept validation and a follow-up survey to bolster the qualitative findings.
How the app failed to support “checking in”
Together with the team, I outlined users’ top tasks and needs as they relate to a mobile experience to understand how our current features support (or fail) our users in their journey. This diagram is a detail of this mapping exercise.
Foregrounding opportunity areas
Opportunity areas included creating summary views, clearly showing what’s new or what needs review, and backgrounding the publishing “from scratch” experience on mobile.
The IA: a consumption-focused experience
Here’s a small detail of a restructured IA to support what we knew app users value: “checking in.”
For example, the publisher experience foregrounded reviewing and approving planned content as opposed to composing from scratch.
Scaling the UI to different “checking in” moments
Adapting the UI for different “check-in” moments was key. The team needed to see how it could support various user groups. This helped us plan features based on real needs. The examples below feature two core design concepts: summary views and unified filters to make “checking in” easy for every user group.
Two releases and a lift in key metrics
The experience vision resulted in two successive releases with concepts from the experience vision:
A main summary view
A unified filter
The first shipped in June 2021 and the second in November 2021 which resulted resulted in a 60% lift in paying user engagement (10 sessions per week per user to 16 sessions per week).
There was a positive uptick in app store reviews as well!
The first release shipped June 2021 enabling mobile users to see outgoing content at a glance.
The second release shipped November 2021, featuring a unified filtering pattern, enabling mobile users to drill down to specific content types within a given view.
Lasting impact
The experience vision drove product focus for the mobile retention strategy. It shaped the immediate roadmap and longer term plans.
It also convinced product to adjust the North Star metric, to reflect true user value — “checking in” — as opposed to the original metric which tracked the number of “messages sent.”
Reflections
The power of primary data
This was the first project where I pushed for an end-to-end design — moving from customer insights to ideas — and I was successful into creating valuable features for both users and the business.
I saw first-hand how powerful generative user research can be to shape (or in Hootsuite’s case, “reshape”) a product. The diagram below is a fairly typical example of a workflow we referenced often when developing the design vision.
Bringing business partners along with you
Looking back, there were many moments where I wished I’d done a few things differently especially around exposing the wider team to messy thinking and unpolished customer data.
For example, I wish I’d not hesitated to ask the team to look at the big, messy journey map the two designers and I made. Instead, we shared a “cleaned-up” version which in hindsight made it harder for the rest of the team to understand where some of our thinking came from.
I’m looking forward to the next time I can help a team see and act on customer data!