User-centered product strategy

Doubled new leads + 10x engagement at MIT

Outcomes

Hours watched on YouTube

Podcast downloads

Learners enrolled in online courses

Publication downloads/year

%

Annual increase in website traffic

%

Percent increase in online sales over two years

Observe

Case Context

The client business unit provides education products, learning resources, and publications to customers globally through multiple online, print, and in-person channels. It targets all levels of supply chain and manufacturing professionals. Technology and industry changes drive increased demand for actionable education and learning products.

Client web engagement is unorganized and scattered across various sites and social media channels. Each product owner produces their own social media accounts, resulting in little to no interaction and upkeep and lagging user utility. The business unit has an ever-growing list of social accounts on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, WhatsApp, et al. Paid channels are incorporated without oversight. Product owners haphazardly launch and stop campaigns with little unifying brand standards, strategy, or content curation.

Stakeholders

Potential, current, and alumni customers, the client business unit, the brand, and parent institute.

Roles

User experience designer. Team and project manager.

Collaborators

Executive leadership, unit product owners, design, engineering, & events teams, contractors.

Reflect

Design Principles

Unit Contributor: The solution should minimally alter existing unit processes and expose contributors to the media as experts in the field.

User: The solutions should:

illustrate the brand’s quality
provide immediate access to learning
provide a sense of familiarity with the people behind the content
and allow the user to appear knowledgeable in front of their peers.

Unit stakeholders inspired our strategy journey with their wealth of content and expertise. We interviewed staff to understand their areas of expertise, passion for subject material, and aspirations for their audiences. We surveyed and interviewed past customers to uncover motivations, JTBD, and emotional considerations. We combined qualitative results with quantitative reviews of LinkedIn, YouTube, blog, web, and social traffic histories to best understand the target audiences for all unit products. We intensely studied content consumed to create personas for three primary audiences.