Portkey is a content management system used by Google’s Content Studio for producing short-form content for three different product areas: Geo, Local Search and Travel. Content Studio uses both internal and external partners for creating this content.
What were the problems?
The CMS forced Portkey administrators to use a rigid system of content assignments to exactly three people (writer, editor, and approver). Admins required a more flexible production model by using assignment workflows.
The business also required a way to track the progress of assignments, to monitor bottlenecks and high priority content assignments - both at the individual assignment level as well as at the vendor level. A more efficient communication and commenting system was also needed.
- How can we make the CMS extensible and scaleable?
- How might we make it easier to get work assigned, approved, and product ready?
- My role - Design, UX
- Tools - Sketch, InVision, Miro
- Platforms - Portkey
What was the approach?
Understanding Critical User Journeys
I came into this project somewhat in the middle of the design process. There had already been a design sprint where stakeholders elucidated their requirements and pain points. To a degree, engineering had a solution in place. I had to understand where they left off, and where they ultimately wanted to go.
Planning
Before diving into the wireframes, I needed to do an analysis of these learnings: What were the problems in the current version of the CMS, what are solutions to those problems, what are the different user’s needs. I used Miro to ensure that every user’s requirements would implemented.
Based on the critical user journeys, I broke down the steps essential for the different users to get from beginning to end seamlessly.
Wireframing and Prototyping
In Sketch, I created mockups of all the screens and actions users would see while doing their work. I made working prototypes in InVision to illustrate how the CMS works for different user journeys: creating content, reviewing content, editing content, rejecting content, commenting, monitoring work progress, and creating individual, bulk and queue assignments using workflows.
What were the learnings or compromises?
- Unfortunately, I was not able to sit down with a vendor or content creator for a usability study of the prototypes. As a contractor, I had no access to non-Google level users.
- Sadly, the whole project was eventually shelved after a re-organization of the teams resources and priorities.