Nextdoor Ads Manager
"Imagine you're a small business owner trying to launch a campaign but feeling overwhelmed by a clunky ad platform. For many of our users, this was the reality."
The challenge: The platform wasn’t user-friendly, leading to frustration and a drop in self-serve campaigns.”
The business need: Improve the ad creation experience to drive self-serve campaign adoption and increase revenue.
My role: Led end-to-end design for the ad platform, focusing on solving this problem while ensuring scalability.
When we started we began asking ourselves: How do we design an ad platform that not only meets business needs but is also user-friendly and scalable?"
If we wanted to solve the problem, we needed to understand both our users and the market landscape."
Research insights:
Users wanted simplicity, predictability, and control over ad creation.
Pain points included confusing workflows and lack of consistency.
Goals:
Deliver a streamlined user experience to reduce friction.
Create a scalable design system to support growth.
Achieve a platform experience on par with, or exceeding, competitors.
"We knew better UX would drive adoption, which directly supported our revenue goals by increasing campaign creation rates."
"We discovered a critical insight through interviews and data: Our users, like delivery truck drivers, rely on familiarity and predictability to get the job done efficiently."
Key pain points:
Navigating between tools was disjointed.
A lack of standard patterns increased learning time.
How this shaped our approach:
Prioritized a familiar and intuitive interface to minimize cognitive load.
Designed workflows that aligned with users' mental models.
"With user insights in hand, we tackled the organization of the platform."
Approach:
Collaborated closely with product and engineering to build a framework that prioritized simplicity and predictability.
Used a modular system to ensure features were exactly where users expected them.
"We organized the platform with the principle that features should be exactly where users expect them, minimizing friction during navigation."
Outcome:
Improved discoverability and reduced time spent searching for features.
Information Architecture for Nextdoor Ads Manager
"To ensure the platform scaled effectively, we focused on building a solid foundation."
Strategy:
Designed iteratively, with continuous user testing and feedback loops.
Built a component library (tables, cards, etc.) optimized for efficiency and clarity.
"Tables and cards were chosen because they efficiently display complex data, a key need for advertisers."
Collaboration: Partnered with engineering early to avoid scalability issues and align on constraints.
"The result was a platform that transformed how users create campaigns."
Features:
Streamlined navigation, consistent patterns, and intuitive workflows.
Scalable design system supporting future growth.
Connection to goals:
Achieved a user experience on par with competitors.
Delivered a solution that aligned with business goals for scalability and adoption.
Metrics:
Reduced time to create a campaign by 30%.
Increased self-serve campaign volume by 20%.
Positive user feedback highlighted improved ease of use.
Reflection:
“This project taught me the importance of balancing user needs with business priorities to drive meaningful outcomes.”