Month: July 2019

Unit Specification Project

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
In a franchised retail chain, individual retail locations can have different physical specifications. Many of these differences impact how we design and produce advertising materials that need to be displayed in the store. Some are physical characteristics such as door sizes, front window sizes, how much space is available on the countertop. Others are logistical characteristics such as building codes, strip center rules, egress patterns, etc. Some stores can receive packages at the store, some cannot. Some stores serve lunch and dinner, some close at 3 pm. In addition to these specs, other data can be matched up to stores for other projects like menu pricing models.

USER
Internal marketing department, area managers and franchisees

CHALLANGE
As we developed, designed, packed and shipped promotional advertising materials, taking into account all of this data on the locations can alter the actual kit that is sent, creating versions of the kit. This “Versioning” process is critical to a system-wide rollout of POP so that all stores’ unique specs can be taken care of.

SOLUTION
Create a custom database of store specifications, collect data vis user surveys and during promotion rollouts. Once data is collected and verified, this data can be used in POP fulfillment documents. Merging this specs database with design files, pack-out documents used in the collation and ship-prep of the kits.

When producing new menu panels or any other collateral that contained price points, we merged this section of the database to the design files as part of the Menu Production Portal Project.

NOTE: As we compiled this database, it became the single source of the most accurate store characteristics database for the client.

My Role

• Account Manager
• Customer Research
• Strategy and Brainstorming
• Design of collection tools
• Database design

Menu Production Portal

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Wingstop, a hot wing, fast-casual restaurant chain, needed an efficient, fast and cost-effective way to collect pricing data, format in-store menus and deliver those menus in a relatively short amount of time.

Each store had a unique set of prices but used the same menu template. Several logistics and supply-chain events required a quick turnaround release and implementation of new pricing models.

USER
Managers and franchisees of store locations. These users had limited time to enter this data and proof the information as they are fairly busy running their restaurants.

CHALLANGE
With a tight turnaround for production, we needed to be able to collect all prices from 600 individual stores, get the price content into the menu files and produce 600 final, proofed and approved menus and get them into production. Critical to the success of the project is collecting the data quickly, having the deciding stakeholder approve the proof and creating the final print files of the menus.

Franchisors are not allowed to dictate pricing to their franchisees. They can make suggestions based on current localized sales metrics and trends. We integrated these suggestions into the system, making it easier for the franchisees to determine pricing, although they still all needed to go through the process of entering the prices on their own.

Our challenge was to create a system that was easy-to-use, simple in interface and comprehensive to the collection of the data and would require minimal time from the busy schedule of them running their restaurants.

SOLUTION
I created a form on our website, complete with graphics instructions, menu panel art and field for all of their prices. Franchisees or managers were asked to log in, answer some store specification characteristics (used in cross-over Unit Specification Project), their menu dimensions and then all of their current pricing for each menu item.

Once this information was captured, the database of prices was merged into variable data fields in the design file for the menu boards. Production artists could call up the current store in production, dial in their price model and populate variables in the design file in order to create a proof. Connection of the database to the live design file enabled us to populate the file with live data and create a proof in a short amount of time, creating efficiencies in the process that we had not had previously.

Lessons Learned
Market pricing buy-in. After a couple of rounds, though the evaluation of the data that was coming in, we noticed most DMAs were following similar pricing models. In subsequent versions, we implemented “suggested pricing models” within markets, pre-populating pricing fields with company-approved models. This reduced the users time significantly, speeding up production and time-to-market of future menus

My Role

• Account Manager
• Customer Research
• Strategy and Brainstorming
• Database Design
• Graphic Design

Interactive Infographic

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Create an animated, interactive infographic for a new Rackspace cloud eCommerce platform for use in web ads and online presentations.

USER
Internal Rackspace sales and marketing department. Their User: Online merchants that want to take advantage of an open commerce platform that leverages the worldwide developer community.

CHALLANGE
Rackspace Open Cloud needed of a set of digital image slides to illustrate a webinar presentation for an X.commerce eCommerce platform. The client outlined the presentation and needed approximately 30 images to illustrate the content in the presentation that will run in an animated infographic format. The slide files need to be delivered in a digital web-friendly format that can easily be imported into a presentation tool such as PowerPoint or Acrobat and also is easily displayed in the web browser.

RESEARCH
Previously, the client had used Flash animation technology for this type of interactive infographic but wanted to use a more updated technology that would run on mobile devices easily.

SOLUTION
We proposed that we develop the project in HTML 5.0 as this would be available to more device types, mobile, etc. and make the presentation for access to the user and create a better overall user experience.

My Role

• Account Manager
• Customer Research
• Strategy and Brainstorming
• UX Producer
• Graphic Design

Educational Software

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Using existing educational content from print products, produce animated, interactive, multimedia educational software products that both supplement current product offering and expand the product line into the digital space.

USER
Students with special needs, learning disabilities, and special education educators.

CHALLANGE
PCI Educational Publishing was known for it’s original, supplemental materials for special education and learning disabilities – specifically products that teach life skills. Using content from the most popular products, we needed to create an interactive, multimedia presentation of the material. The user needed to be able to go between the print material and the digital presentation, experiencing similar illustrations, characters, and activities, as their computer time could be limited.

SOLUTION
Design a series of modules that mirror the chaptered content from the exiting material, introducing the illustrations in an animated format and designing interactive games and activities for each module. The illustrations were mostly vector graphics, so using Adobe Flash was the logical choice at the time. This allowed us to repurpose existing and familiar content across most of the modules.

Lessons Learned
Circling back with the client. When working with a lot of structured educational content, we needed to make sure we presenting ideas to the authors in a well-organized, lesson-based fashion. At this time, these software modules would serve as a supplement to current lessons. Therefore, breaking them down into module chunks that both made sense to the overall lesson but also made the best use of the user’s computer time was critical. After several rounds of adjusting this scope per module, we were able to define what those chunks should be.

Previsualization saves time. A form of prototyping, we wireframed animated sequences for authors to comments on and approve. For animation, we had always done some form of previs for all animated sequences. As we went forward, we found the more we increased this phase, the shorter the production time of this content overall.

My Role

• Strategy and Brainstorming
• UX Producer
• Activity Designer
• Animation Designer
• Install/Delivery Production

Customer Franchise Portal

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Create an online customer portal to give contextual access to products and services for clients franchisees.

USER
Retail chain franchisees and franchisor company marketing operations.

CHALLENGE
As an added value to clients, we wanted to create an online portal for client’s franchisees to use for the ordering of marketing materials, services. messaging and other features used to bring the franchise community together.

This system needs to make it easy for franchisees to place orders for materials, pay for them, receive current news and information, get marketing support and communicate with the company and along with other franchisees.

SOLUTION
Design a user experience that combines a customized web-store for existing materials with a needs-based custom material design process and wrap, add messaging, news, file directory and other features, all in a custom-branded experience.

The franchisee would see their store’s specification (see unit specification project) and follow support and marketing services based on this contextual information. The company would be able to manage orders, view usage reporting, manage compliances strategy issues, support the franchisees using various online features.

My Role

• Account Manager
• UX Designer
• Customer Research
• Strategy and Brainstorming
• UI Design

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