Revamping Agency CMS System

Desktop • UX Research • UX Strategy • Design System • Business Consulting
Deliverables
  • Wireframes
  • High-Fidelity Figma Designs
  • Animation Prototypes
Team
  • 2 UX Researchers
  • 5 UX Designers
  • 1 Product Manager
  • 7 Developers
My Role
  • Lead UX Researcher
  • UX/UI Designer
Problem
William Morris Endeavor (WME) is a leading Global Entertainment and Talent Agency that represents artists and content creators across books, digital media, film, food, music, television, and theater. WME came to us for assistance in upgrading their internal project management platform and CRM system.

Over the years, WME has grown into many disparate departments, yet its processes and tools have not been adapted. The current system was developed in 2003, which wasn’t really used by its agents. Aging tools are bogging the agency and aren't salvageable.

Data is scattered across teams without clear guidance on maintaining it, leading to lots of lost data and record redundancy. Departments are not able to search or share data that could lead to better deals and relationships with each other, and they are losing new business to competitors with more efficient technology.
Solution
Instead of building upon the old platform, we elevated the conversation by helping to develop a  new, modern talent representation and project management platform with a new CRM system implemented.

Our solution involved diving into discovery research, user interviews, and usability testing. We then analyzed the results to identify pain points and develop practical solutions to create a better experience.The outcome was a visually appealing platform with a system that tracks multichannel department needs and activities with secure data and control.

The MVP includes features of a personal dashboard, roster, advanced searching, and project booking. It also captures correspondence from agent to agent and between departments while logging all activity within projects.

Research Strategy

Knowing what to ask

Before starting the design, we thought it was crucial to gather concrete evidence of users’ pain points. We outlined a diverse range of research topics we wish to uncover and corresponding methodologies. We then refined the topics into 3 themes, which later became our research's objectives.

Refining the themes

Theme #1: Collaboration and communication across departments
- How do agents currently communicate at work?
- How do agents search and view information when a new project comes in?
- How do agents from different departments collaborate?
Theme #2: Task tracking and project visualization
-
How do agents track projects now?
- What information is essential for a project?
Theme #3: Workflow customization and flexibility
- What does the current workflow look like?
- Do different departments have different workflows?

User Interviews

Pinpointing target users’ main concerns

We conducted a series of interactive stakeholder engagements across all levels of agency employees.

🎯 The goal was to understand agents’ current end-to-end workflow, including technologies and tools in use, processes, and cultures across each WME department or team.

We sent out surveys and conducted department-level 1:1 interviews. In the end, we received 50+ survey responses and conducted 21 interviews.

Our preliminary findings

Across core business lines, departments act entrepreneurially to solve problems for their team and clients.”

Despite belonging to the same company, WME departments operate independently to a large extent due to cross-department information sharing and communication inefficiency.

Many agents expressed that this “isolation” caused increased costs in day-to-day operations and higher business loss. The following six primary insights were identified through our research.

Decoding the User Journey

Current user journey

We then mapped out WME agents’ workflow into journey maps and discovered there are actually two main workflow pipelines: the Project-based pipeline and the Client deal-based pipeline.

🤔️ This presented a new challenge of how to include two different pipelines into one standard process. I created the following diagram to show how we can consolidate and streamline their existing workflows.

Mapping the path to user satisfaction

After consolidating the workflow, we agreed on the direction of creating an information-condensed platform with features that help agents sort through data to view and find targeted information quickly. We brainstormed 3 feature areas where we should focus on:

  • Creating a comprehensive personal dashboard to display all essential information.
  • Having a searchable database for all past and ongoing projects, clients, buyers, etc.
  • Creating a project creation and submission flow that is intuitive and easy to use.

Feature prioritization

With another round of detailed features-level brainstorming, I plotted all the ideas on a 2x2 matrix based on Value to Overall UX and Effort to Implement to find which features are prioritized for our MVP.

Low Fidelity Prototypes

Designing a new experience, and putting it to the test

With the help of the product manager and engineering team, we were able to discuss, test, and iterate the design until we felt confident in our design decisions.

We then sent a multitude of prototypes to our stakeholders and a selected group of members from the core team to test the designs.

🙌🏼 83%  of users reported an easy and seamless experience.
🏆 100% expressed they will use the new platform for client search, talent sourcing, and project submission.

High Fidelity Prototype

Bringing Pulse to life

Moving on to designing the high-fidelity interfaces in Figma, my goal was to focus on up-leveling Pulse’s visual identity along with making sure our new updates were intuitive and easy to use.

Click here to access the interactive prototype

Key Screens

Dashboard + Primary navigation

Sitewide search

Project Creation

Sizzle Video

Design System, UI, and Components

Color theme and style guide

We tested out different color themes and typographies and created the Pulse style guide, which became our design's backbone.

It’s important to keep things as seamless as possible by providing clear documentation, such as style guides, annotated designs, and asset libraries, that can help bridge the gap between design and development. It’s also helpful to communicate with the engineers throughout the handoff process to answer any questions and ensure everyone is on the same page.

UI and components

While using Pulse’s brand guidelines and design system, we also created custom components that proved to be crucial in the process.

Where we left off and the final result

Before handing the final designs off to the engineering team, we conducted more usability testing with target user agents, focusing on testing functionalities, detecting errors, and refining user flows.

  • Testing functionality: Ensure that the main features (dashboard, primary navigation, search, project creation, etc.) work as intended and are easily accessible to agents.
  • Detecting errors: Identify any usability issues, accessibility issues, errors, or bugs that hinder agents’ experience on the Pulse platform and task completion.
  • Refining user flows: Focus on streamlining the project creation flow to minimize any confusion and frustration.

From the results and feedback we got, most agents can understand the dashboard and navigate smoothly within 5 minutes after being introduced to the Pulse platform. And 80%+ of them expressed that the project creation feature with multiple entry points would greatly reduce their daily workflow friction by allowing them to organize data inputs, which they originally needed to source from different platforms, in one place.

The engineering team is currently building out the Pulse platform, and I’m confident the new and improved system will provide WME’s agents with exceptional work experience on a daily basis.

More Projects

Interested in working together? Get in touch today.

Drop me a message at siachang.work@gmail.com