iHeartMedia: EPO
Overview
Enterprise Production Orders (EPO) is a software built to connect iHeartMedia ad production teams to the sales team. Sales associates want to be able to keep track of the status of the ad to update clients and communicate with the production team.
Tools
Figma & Microsoft Teams
Duration
4 months
One of the many creative teams at iHeartMedia is their production team. They help create radio ads for clients. These teams include a producer, a dubber, and sometimes a talented voice actor (In most cases the person who can produce the radio ad would also read the script and voice the ad.)
EPO was made to replace iHeartMedia’s current solution PPO (Paperless Production Orders). Production teams were excited for an update, but hesitant as many had worked with the same software for over 20 years. Unfortunately PPO’s shortcomings were causing communication issues across teams and with increase of pressure on production teams, they needed a software that could match their needs and workflow.
Problem
The workflow of creating a custom radio ad by iHeartMedia’s production teams has become bogged down by latent software, which caused miscommunication across teams and a loss in ad revenue for iHeartMedia.
Solution
A software that connects all teams involved in the ad production process and updates tools and software being utilized by the production team.
How might we create a streamline the ad production process into one software that can be used across teams?
User Interviews
I was lucky enough to have a Senior UX Researcher, Shabina Aslam, as a partner throughout this project. She planned and lead all of the research that we required to understand the production teams’ workflow, views, and needs.
In this picture she is leading an activity to understand the highs and lows of production team’s daily tasks. (I’m in the top right corner observing and taking notes.)
Key Takeaways:
- Producers are take on multiple roles and wear many hats. They require a software that allows them to change between these roles seamlessly.
- Producers want to be able to understand their daily assignments “at a glance.”
- Producers are nervous for change and a possible loss of their known patterns from years of using legacy tools.
User Journey
From user interviews, stakeholder meetings, and cross-team communications, we were able to understand the journey of how an ad was created. This journey became our lifeline for how we began to communicate where changes were necessary and how we wanted to implement them. We could show all the different roles that the production teams were forced to fill and where communication was failing.
Wireframes
I was not the first designer to take on this project. I wasn’t even the second or third. By the time it was my turn to take on the deprecation of PPO and the rise of EPO, wireframes were long in the past.
This project was low on budget and time. PPO had a shut down date, and the director of development said they were out of time to build any components from scratch. Luckily, iHeartMedia had a robust Design Language and Component Library.
My designs stemmed from mixing and matching interactions and component patterns from this library and working with the developers on what we could edit given the time allowed.
Color & Status
PPO relied on color to show the status of the Production Order (PO) or radio ad. Producers appreciated this as they were able to quickly understand the state of their to do list.
PPO had 22 possible statuses and many colors were repeated. At the beginning there was a large cull of these down to only 5. But as we interviewed and tested with ad producers, it became apparent that these colors were vital to their daily efficiency and mental map.
(1.) These colors and icons were used in the “Status” column and as error signifiers (2.). Orders that required attention and/or contained an error would be highlighted red and brought to the top of the work order list.
The work order list was called the “Queue.” One line item equates to one radio ad that requires at least one producer to complete it. Sometimes work orders were also referred to as production orders or PO.
The Queue is a constant flow of requests from sales teams to create radio ads. A producer can be assigned up to 15 ads in a day, and will be able to finish them by the end of the day.
We also replicated these colors and icons as chips in the title of the work order, when the user had decided to open a work order from the queue.
Creative Workflow
The creative workflow in EPO refers to the steps that the production team goes through to complete an ad. One of my biggest responsibilities was iterating and refining how EPO would communicate these steps.
This was also an area where most of the miscommunications happened between Account Executives and Production Teams. Our user journey from earlier was the real work horse document for these parts of designing.
All work orders would have their own unique workflow and story. Here is a rough walkthrough I created to show the necessary steps for completing a simple work order. It ends with emailing the audio file to the sales associate, who would then handle the communication with the client.
This short video is not flashy by any means, but it was a huge turning point in communication and understanding for our team. Because this project had seen many hands a lot of documentation was lost. This short clip was a north star for our team that all developers, stakeholders, and users agreed upon was a correct flow of a simple work order.
Ad+ Dub Integration
There is another role that is apart of the Production Team called a Dubber. This role does the final edits of the ad’s audio file before submitting that file to a radio station. The software Ad+ Dub was designed by iHeartMedia for their Dubbers.
The Dubber role was another hat for the Producers to wear. In order for Producers to seamlessly swap into this role, we decided to integrate Ad+ Dub into EPO. The production team didn’t want to lose sight of their queue and the work order they were working on, so we made this transition another step in the creative workflow.
I advocated heavily to place this integration within EPO. Producers work quickly and they need support from their software that guides them into the next step. I worked with Olivia Wong, the designer for Ad+ Dub, on how to integrate and resize her designs to fit dubbers needs.
This is the view of the working queue where Producers can see their upcoming tasks and priorities. We highlighted and raised to the top of the queue orders that are urgent.
When a user clicks on a line item in the queue a drawer opens up with further information for that ad request. It had to be flexible for producers who want to have all of the information available and easy to edit, but not to overwhelm them.
The Creative Workflow in the center column shows breadcrumbs for the tasks, and who is in charge of those tasks, in the ad request. In this example all the tasks are completed. If there are any questions or concerns, there is a comment/chat section on the furthest right.
