MOZ - STAT
At STAT, I served as the Lead Product Designer tasked with modernizing our outdated SEO platform. I led a team of designers, implementing a dual-track agile method to work in two-week sprints. My role involved creating a new design system, strategic decision-making, hands-on design work, and collaboration with cross-functional teams to ensure the final product met user needs and company goals.
User: Expert SEO
STAT's platform offers features such as rank tracking, keyword research, competitive analysis, and customizable reporting, helping users make data-driven decisions to improve their search engine rankings and drive more organic traffic to their websites.
Identifying Unique Challenges
Legacy Infrastructure: Updating an outdated platform from the 90s meant grappling with legacy infrastructure and technical debt. Integrating modern design principles and functionalities while ensuring compatibility and scalability was a significant challenge.
User Expectations: Meeting the evolving needs and expectations of users in the fast-paced digital landscape was another challenge. Balancing usability improvements with innovative features without overwhelming or alienating existing users requires careful consideration and user feedback.
Stakeholder Alignment: Gaining buy-in from stakeholders across the organization, including product managers, developers, and executives, was crucial for the success of the redesign. Aligning design decisions with business objectives and addressing divergent viewpoints required diplomacy and persuasion.
Legacy Infrastructure
The infrastructure was challenging, to say the least, we had to bring everything up to best practices while also bringing along some old power users.
Modernization Strategies:
The journey to revitalize our infrastructure by embracing modern technologies, frameworks, and design patterns in stages was a long-winded battle. The majority of the services were interconnected and impacting one service would impact other services. The STAT platform was essentially a strategic chessboard while moving or updating pieces we had an opportunity to sacrifice stagnant features and components like pons while moving our pieces forward to be advantageous.
Thus, our transformation began by transitioning from a monolithic architecture to micro-services, empowering us with the flexibility to containerize our features without pissing off our power users. This not only enabled scalability but also fostered greater collaboration between our engineering teams, ensuring a cohesive and innovative approach to our platform's evolution.
Competitive Research
Market Analysis:
We undertook a strength and weaknesses assessment of the competitors existing in the market with the SEO tools. For that, we analyzed their features, pricing models, user reviews, and along with that, we also analyzed the data for market share to find opportunities where we may differentiate and make improvements as a tool for Expert SEO’s. Embracing the success in designs, we did not reinvent the wheel but took time to go through successful design patterns and user experiences from leading SEO tools and other relevant industries.
Moving very quickly with the design process, we were able to deliver an intuitive and familiar user experience by benchmarking against industry leaders and surfacing patterns common to great usability.
Conclusion:
My time at STAT was incredibly rewarding, as it provided me with invaluable lessons and experiences in navigating complex challenges, fostering team collaboration, and delivering user-centric design solutions. Leading the redesign of the platform taught me the importance of strategic planning, agile methodologies, and an empathetic understanding of user needs. Overcoming legacy infrastructure hurdles, conducting thorough competitive research, and embracing successful design patterns not only strengthened my design skills but also contributed to the success of the project. Ultimately, the satisfaction of witnessing the positive impact of our work on users and the growth of the platform affirmed the value of my time at STAT and fueled my passion for creating meaningful and impactful design solutions.
