Overview
Muck Rack is a growth-stage media relations SaaS platform and the leading tool used to pitch the media. I led the redesign of its core feature - Pitches - while I worked in a squad tasked with scaling and automation.
My contribution
Senior product designer
The team
1 x product manager
1 × product designer
3 × engineers
Year
2022 -2023
Process
Applying a user-centered approach, what started out as a bug report, evolved into an improved Pitch experience that gives users more flexibility and context when curating their pitch recipient lists.
User interviews helped me begin to re-conceptualize how users organize data for media relations.
I do a lot of pitching and relationship building with reporters … regularly, daily, multiple times a day.
—Marina Li, Assistant Media Executive, Earned Media at Edelman
Impact
A faster pitch experience focused on relevancy with a new Search API and media contact matching functionality, which saved customers 15+ hours weekly in research and contact list management.
Challenges
Manual internal processes. Processes that previously allowed us to deliver exceptional customer service, became problematic as we scaled.
Tech debt. We were a team that shipped fast working with Bootstrap v3, which presented unique constraints when the time came to automate workflows for both internal and customer facing tools.
A new Search API needed to be built to implement my designs.
Problem
Usage rates around pitching were low.
Preliminary research also indicated users were conducting most of their work off-platform.
I was able to shift the team’s focus from a solution space to a problem space by presenting user research, gathering user data, analyzing existing user flows and communicating with the engineering team to better understand the technical landscape and identify opportunities for automation.
Solution:
Automated pitch recipient lists
Mapping the Pitch Experience
Future State: Media List Import End-to-End
User Persona: The Relationship Builder
Over twenty product users were interviewed and the resulting personas helped me design with a better understanding of what tasks our users were actually trying to accomplish while preparing a pitch.
The most time consuming tasks for the relationship builder archetype are researching contacts and curating pitch recipient lists.
Wow - for the first time ever, we now have user personas! Thanks for all your research involving interviewing our users and putting together our first set of personas.
—Lee Semel, CTO and co-founder (Apr 1, 2022)
Design with Engineering
Test and Iterate
We tested real-world scenarios always concerned about usability.
Outcome
Muck Rack helps us understand a reporter before we even talk to them. It helps us build that relationship … It allows us to be really intentional when pitching. We weren't able to do that without Muck Rack.
—Kevin Rider, Senior Public Relations Manager of Angel City FC, member of the National Women's Soccer League
UX Impact
Saved customers 15+ hours weekly;
Reduced media list creation time by 50%.
Business Impact
Led transition to automated internal workflows;
Collaboration
Integrated developers into design;
Inspired cross-functional UX adoption.
Learnings
On being strategic.
Laying the groundwork for future UX improvements with each feature design, results in a team and system that is prepared for more impactful design solutions. What started out as a bug report, became an opportunity to significantly improve a core experience and prior design decisions made it possible for the team rally behind work.