What Is DCE ?
DCE is a tool used by Ad managers teams to manage and launch digital ad campaigns. It helps plan, schedule, and monitor ads across platforms. Instead of doing everything manually, DCE makes the process faster and clearer. It’s like a smart workspace for creative distribution and campaign setup.
Challange
"Imagine you're a campaign manager trying to run ads. You land on the DCE dashboard, but there’s no clear path forward. You have to manually schedule one ad at a time."
Campaign managers were struggling with a manual ad scheduling. There was no clear guidance, no visibility into which creatives were going live, and it was hard to test variations effectively. This led to frustration, wasted time, and missed insights.
Problem
Designed the experience in DCE by introducing a smart automation with manual control, and a new tab to preview upcoming scheduled ads. This gave users more visibility, flexibility, and confidence to run better campaigns without the guesswork.
Solution
Before designing anything, we needed to understand who we are building for. We dig into user behaviors, preferences, and challenges to ensure our solutions were rooted in real needs not assumptions.
Getting to Know Our Users
65%
Users said they manage 5 or more campaign at once, needed faster and clearer ad scheduling tools.
58%
Users struggle with lack of visibility to understand which ads are live, scheduled or delivered.
72%
Users want a balance of automation and manual control.
60%
Expressed frustration with having to switch between platforms to track ad performance.
80%
noted that missing creative variations in the learning phase led to poor campaign results.
Strategic Planning
01
User Centered Approach
02
Simplicity & Usability
03
Efficiency & Productivity
Focused on designing a simple, intuitive interface that eliminates unnecessary complexity
Prioritized clean layouts, clear navigation, and minimal clutter
Allowed users to manage projects easily without confusion
Goal was to deliver an experience that requires minimal learning effort while providing all essential functionalities.
Adopted a user-first strategy by conducting detailed research, interviews, and competitor analysis
Helped understand user frustrations, goals, and behavior patterns
Ensured every design decision was aligned with user needs
Aimed to build a solution that solves real problems and improves the overall user experience
Structured Work Sync to streamline workflows and improve team productivity.
Prioritized features like real time task tracking, progress updates.
Helped save time, reduce manual effort, and stay organized for efficient, timely project completion.
Goal was to improve the efficiency of the platform, especially around the Learning Phase of ad campaigns. We aligned closely with business stakeholders and users to ensure we were solving the right problems, making the ad scheduling process smarter, faster, and more automated.
Improve ad variation during the Learning Phase
Reduce manual scheduling effort
Add visibility into upcoming schedules
Provide better control over campaign performance
Scope
Reduce manual steps.
Improve ad variation coverage in Learning Phase.
Decrease setup time per campaign.
Increase user satisfaction and usability test score.
Success Metrics
Design Process
The design process for DCE followed a structured approach to ensure an intuitive, visually appealing, and highly functional user experience.
We started by discovering real problems through interviews with campaign managers who felt frustrated with the confusing and manual ad setup process. This helped us understand their day-to-day struggles.
Discover
We designed a smoother experience with intuitive visuals, better creative control, and a dedicated Learning Phase tab. Everything was made simpler and easier to understand.
Design
We defined the core issues like no visibility into scheduled ads, limited control during the Learning Phase, and a lack of clarity in the interface. This gave us a clear direction to solve what actually matters.
Define
We delivered a clean, tested solution that gave users both flexibility and clarity, reduced manual work which allowed them to launch smarter campaigns with confidence.
Deliver
User Interview Insights
Listening to real users helped us uncover what they struggle with, what they expect, and what truly matters in their day to day campaign management.
By stepping into our users shoes, discovered their daily struggles aren’t about doing more work, they're about making better decisions with more clarity and less stress.
Empathy Mapping
Translated user emotions into actionable design: Organized what users say, feel, and struggle with into core features, focus areas, wants, and challenges, so that we could design with real needs at the center.
Affinity Mapping
Understanding what frustrates our users helped us uncover where the real gaps were, so we could design a product that works with them.
User Pain Points
Without a calendar view, users had no way to review what was coming up or do sanity checks before launch.
02
Setting up each ad manually, one ad set at a time, has increased chances of mistakes, especially during high pressure launches.
03
Not enough ad variations to track how well each was doing without asking developers to swap videos daily.
04
Users found it hard to know which creatives were live, upcoming, or completed, there was no clear visual hierarchy or guidance.
01
Meet Alex, the strategist behind every campaign. Understanding his day helps us design tools that make his work faster, clearer, and smarter.
User Persona
Understanding real needs through user stories, These stories reflect what users want to achieve while using the platform helping us design with purpose and empathy.
User Story
Understanding the Landscape: How other platforms solve the same problems
Competitive Analysis
This user flow maps out how users interact with the DCE platform, from setting up a campaign to monitoring performance making sure every step is smooth, clear, and purposeful.
User Flow
This final design focuses on solving real user frustrations like lack of clarity, creative control, and scheduling confusion by offering a more visual, flexible, and guided workflow in the Learning Phase.
Final Design
Usability Test Summary
To ensure our design was truly user friendly, we conducted usability tests with digital marketing managers and campaign specialists. The goal was to see how easily users could navigate the Learning Phase, schedule ads, and understand campaign performance. We focused on tasks like adding multiple creatives, and toggling between auto and manual modes. The feedback helped us validate the design and uncover areas to simplify further.
80%
users said they felt more confident while scheduling ads.
70%
Participants completed all the tasks.
70%
appreciated the visual clarity of the learning phase status
50%
Indicating demand for both automation and customization options.