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End-to-end design of an A.I. powered marketing tool

Project Summary

I led design efforts to create a free tool that could be used in marketing efforts to gain new clients for a startup tech consulting agency

Responsibilities

  • User Interviews

  • Experience Design

  • Prototype & Usability Testing

Timeline & Team

2 weeks from start to finish, with a 2-person remote team

Results

Successfully launched into the company's marketing campaign July, 2023

Company Overview

Pangolin Tech is a small, early-stage startup that offers custom software development & tech consulting to new tech founders

They intended to launch a LinkedIn marketing campaign to:

  • Attract new tech entrepreneurs

  • Offer them free value in exchange for their contact information

Project Summary

My task was to create a free tool that offered enough value to earn contact information from the company's target customer

During this 2 week project, I worked closely with a Senior Developer from Argentina

Process

Market trends showed rising interest in A.I.

LinkedIn trending topic

Surges in feature releases that were ChatGPT wrappers, like:

  • ClickUp - A.I. powered task description writing

  • Wix - A.I. powered copywriting for websites

  • Loom - A.I. powered title writing for videos

I focused on Pangolin Tech's target customer

Screenshot 2023-07-29 at 12.28.46 PM.png

I conducted 5 user interviews that revealed pain around how to get started when they have an app idea 

I discovered that first-time founders want to know:

  • What technologies exist to build their ideas

  • How the technologies work together

  • How much they might have to pay for these different technologies

"...turns out I'm just a business man with an idea and I wasn't qualified to make technical decisions about how to build an app."

Quote from an interviewee

Based on the needs discovered in research, it appeared that a CTO was the human version of the solution the users needed

Virtual CTO powered by A.I.

What would make this experience feel valuable enough that you wouldn't just go to ChatGPT?

I drew from years of observation working with these clients

  • They frequently requested a visual diagram to aid them in their technical conversations and networking

Screenshot 2023-07-29 at 12.44.11 PM.png

I mapped a very simple experience that would lead to the output of an actionable technical diagram

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Budget required us to limit the calls to the Open AI API

I collaborated with the developer to decide how to limit the calls. Based on his input, I decided that we could:

  1. Hardcode some questions from the CTO to gather information from the user

  2. Then, send all the responses at once to the API

  3. The only truly AI part of the product would be the end output

Testing with the AI showed a level of specificity needed to create a decent output

I discovered by testing with 6 different founders that the app idea had to be split up into individual features to keep them focused on explaining each concept clearly.

Screenshot 2023-07-29 at 12.54.43 PM.png

The only point in the chat that depended conditionally on the user's choice of input language needed to accommodate words & phrases like:

Screenshot 2023-07-29 at 12.58.47 PM.png

I performed 6 usability tests to discover varying language inputs

  • nope​

  • No.

  • Nah that's it

  • Nope, that's it

  • Uuuuuh nope

I made a simple wireframe in Figma

lynn chat wireframe.png

A 6-founder focus group voted on a face that looked trustworthy and smart

I used an A.I. tool called MidJourney to generate a few faces and asked 6 users to vote on the one that looked the most trustworthy and smart

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Variable output from the AI API proved to be one final hurdle

It took a lot of experimentation from the developers to get an output that was easily readable and included everything we asked for:

  • Select from specific technologies

  • Include average costs for anything that was a 3rd party service

  • Include a link to each technology proposed

image (4).png
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Because the output was so variable, I included some of the information on text cards outside of the diagram

Screenshot 2023-07-29 at 1.14.34 PM.png

Outcomes & Lessons

This project launched July 15th, 2023, and is still being integrated into the marketing campaign on LinkedIn

lynn landing.png
image.png

Given more time...

lynn landing.png

I foresee founders hesitating to share their ideas with a bot, and would like to test and find out what it would take to ease that concern.

Design Examples

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