Content first - Social Application for BBDO
BBDO - the global advertising agency sought to create an internal social media mobile application to foster better collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and culture-building among its team members. The goal was to break down silos, enable real-time communication, and enhance employee engagement across different office locations and teams.
Product Design · UX · UI · IA · Prototyping · User Testing - Deployment
Me — UXR, Wireframes - Functionality definition - User Flow Creation, High Fidelity Prototype, and Tech development
Problem statement
The agency faced challenges in internal communication due to its global presence, diverse workforce, and reliance on fragmented tools like email, and intranet platforms. It lacked a centralized and engaging platform that could showcase work, recognize peers and connect them in and communicate company-wide initiative and updates.
Solution: A Social-First Engagement Platform
To address these challenges, we designed a mobile-first, internal social network with the following features:
Activity Feed: A personalized feed displaying company updates, peer recognition, and projects and discussions.
Project showcase and archive: Ability to show each project interactively, in the platform that was designed for, along with a case study and relevant info.
Directory and messaging platform: Ability to search for team members via name, photo, skills and projects worked on and to message them.
Search and Filtering: To categorize each piece of content with smart recommendations for relevant pieces.
& a CMS to track it and manage it all.
Research & Insights
User Interviews and Surveys: Conducted interviews and surveys to gather insights into user expectations and platform-specific preferences. For example, mobile users preferred single-handed interactions, while web users valued deep content access.
We conducted research through surveys, focus groups, and user testing across three key personas:
Creative Teams & Strategists – Needed a space for discovering, brainstorming and sharing insights across campaigns, along with easy connection with people with different skills.
Managers & Executives – Wanted visibility into team engagement and performance.
HR & Employee Engagement Teams – Required tools to improve company culture and retain talent.
Key findings:
🔮 80% wanted a more informal, social approach to company updates, including completed work, new clients, agency happenings, etc.
🔮 78% of employees preferred a mobile-friendly engagement platform.
Design & Prototyping
Using Sketch I built low-fidelity wireframes, tested core flows, and iterated into high-fidelity prototypes. The application focused on:
Engaging Feed: User feeds showcasing a mixture of current content (agency happenings, news, etc), project spotlights and, team members spotlights.
Content specific spotlights / rendering: To showcase the different projects, in-situ how our final user would experience a campaign.
Intuitive Content Creation: Drag-and-drop tools for adding content. Easy approval on the administration side and a way to differentiate the content both back end and front end.
Onboarding: Easy sign-up for new and existing team members, content creators at all levels.
Bringing it to lifee - Cross-team collaboration:
I worked closely with developers building the mobile application and with marketing to launch it in phases
Pilot Launch: Beta testing with a select group of employees
Executive Buy-In: Leadership engagement to drive adoption
Feedback Loops: Continuous iteration based on user engagement metrics
Tech QA: Constant communication with the dev teams, solving issues on the fly.
Results & Impact
📈 70% Adoption in First 3 Months – Fastest adoption rate among internal tools.
🎉 43% Increase in Employee Engagement – More participation in company events and discussions.
🏆 Enhanced Connection Culture – 300+ messages sent between team members in the first quarter.