Creative Agency CRM
A project to solve the unique customer relationship management needs that creative agencies often face. A complete UX process with a prototype deliverable.
Company
Social Power
Role
Product Designer
Year
Spring 2019
Summary
Understanding the Need
We had been searching for a better CRM for our growing client base. Zoho had been what we were using previously for our needs but we found that it lacked certain functions we needed as a creative agency and was confusing to navigate at times.
Initial Research & Feedback
The process began by researching what to focus on when building a custom CRM and defining what our goals were for this project. We held meetings to research other CRM softwares already existed and what features we liked about them. These meetings aided us in creating a feature list we used to strategize and develop actionable steps to create our CRM.
Process & Challenges
Initial Research & Feedback
With the initial research completed, we began to build a prototype for the software. We built out the software’s IA by creating a simple wireframe and user flow. Then we sketched a low-fidelity mockup of what the UI for our CRM would like. The goal in this step was to rapidly gain feedback before committing time to the high-fidelity prototype.
Usability Testing & Problem Discovery
Using the low-fidelity prototype we created, we began to do usability testing over the next few days to see if there was something we had overlooked. It turned out there was a large oversight that we hadn’t considered. The main problem with our initial prototype was that it needed some features that we had overlooked, but had no space for them to be implemented. We learned about this problem by holding usability tests with freelance creatives that operated in related fields.This led us to completely change our approach.
Re-imagining the Design System
We needed something that could expand to fill the needs of specific creatives instead of trying to align their needs to our software. We took a modular design approach to our software. We would not be able to account for all of our needs immediately managing new clients, so we built a system that could expand and grow to fit our needs as they grow too. With this in mind we set out to create our high-fidelity prototype, using to us Adobe XD to create it.
Results
CRM Prototype
At the end of the project we completed our high-fidelity wireframe. The most important thing I learned while working on this project was the importance of usability testing. Good usability testing can be done with just five users and the results led to a more complete solution that better fit our needs. We are preparing to set up a contract with a developer to get the CRM built, but you can view the prototype in action by clicking the button below.
View Prototype