B2B, Responsive Web, User Research, Design Systems
Industry:
Adtech
The Challenge
InMobi's internal tool for creating and editing ad deals suffered from severe tech and usability issues that blocked it from becoming a scalable self-serve solution for customers. This restricted advertisers’ ability to discover, optimize, and monetize ad inventory.
The Solution
Guided by user research, I led design strategy and execution for a new self-serve tool. I worked with engineering to resolve tech issues and simplify deal creation workflows to reduce time-to-market and increase desirability of ad inventory.
The Outcome
The beta launch of the new Deals Platform increased advertisers’ awareness of available inventory, reduced time create and optimize deals, and laid strong foundations for future-facing product enhancements.
01
Background
InMobi achieved immense success in the highly technical ad-tech industry by prioritizing rapid engineering output. However, this approach also resulted in unclear product strategies, subpar user experiences, and frequent bugs.
Product managers, engineers, account managers, and marketers often scrambled to identify and fix customer-impacting issues. The focus on output over quality was creating more work and friction across teams.
As Principal Product Designer and Manager, I introduced new processes that clarified project goals and reduced ad hoc fixes. Instead of relying solely on requirements documents, we collaboratively documented hypotheses and problem statements, ran user journey workshops, conducted user research, and defined QA processes for every project.
Sample Process Artifacts
Journey Maps
Talking to real users uncovered how InMobi’s products fit into their lives—their pain points, expectations, and unmet needs.
InMobi powers ad targeting for demand-side partners (DSPs) and ad agencies through setups called deals. An internal tool for creating and editing deals existed, but tech and usability issues prevented it from being a self-serve solution for customers.
Lost Monetization Opportunities
Customers had to endure a lengthy, multi-team process to create or optimize deals. First, they would work with InMobi’s account managers to determine ad inventory that they wanted to target in their deal. Then the account manager would log a request in Salesforce and send it to an engineer who would create or update the deal. This process could take as much as three days to complete, which would often result in them losing time-sensitive monetization opportunities.
Goals For The New Platform
The primary goal was to create a product that would eliminate this three day turnaround time and allow customers to instantaneously manage their deals.
Ad agencies and DSPs trusted InMobi’s targeting to serve some of the world’s biggest brands. Millions of dollars were potentially at stake, so the new platform had to get it right.
To reduce ambiguity in new product development, I partnered with Product Marketing and account managers to stand up a new UX research practice. We recruited real customers and I led hour-long remote interviews to uncover key needs and pain points—insights that shaped team priorities.
Participant’s appearance is obscured for privacy.
04
Key user needs
UX research uncovered three core needs.
01
Granular Targeting Options
Customers valued InMobi’s uniquely customizable audiences and inventory targeting, so the new self-serve platform had to offer extensive options without overwhelming users.
02
Inventory Recommendations
Customers counted on InMobi to be the expert on its ad inventory and data pipeline. As a result, they expected tailored, revenue-driving inventory recommendations.
03
Speed & Ease of Use
Customers complained that competitor products were slow and difficult to use, making speed and ease of deal creation a basic requirement for any InMobi product.
Quotes from User Research
“If we have the option to target what we need fast, for sure we’ll increase spends.”
“Sometimes clients have budgets remaining at the end of the month or quarter and they need to get rid of them today."
“I have to open it and it takes 2 days. This opportunity is gone. If I can go and open it myself, obviously it saves time.”
“If it’s user friendly, we’re going to use it more”
04
User Roles & Permissions
The Deals Platform served four user groups—three internal groups and customers. I created proto-personas based on users’ jobs-to-be-done and mapped them to in-product permissions.
Internal Admin
InMobi Account Managers and AdOps had full access to targeting and setup controls to better support customers, when needed.
Core tasks:
Create and edit deals manually Create deals with curated inventory Create curated inventory via CSV Create curated inventory manually
Customer
Customers—employees of DSPs and ad agencies—were the primary users, needing to quickly create or edit deals. They had permissions for most deal creation features, but advanced technical targeting and internal setup controls were hidden and reserved for InMobi employees.
Core tasks:
Create and edit deals manually Create deals with curated inventory
Internal Editor
InMobi Account Managers and AdOps members were given permission the same permissions as customers, but with all targeting and deal setup controls. This allowed them to fully assist customers, if needed.
Core tasks:
Create, edit, and delete deals manually Create deals with curated inventory Create curated inventory via CSV Create curated inventory manually Invite users and manage accounts
Internal Viewer
Some employees at InMobi would benefit from viewing existing deals, but had no need to create or edit. Special view-only flows were created for them.
Core tasks:
View deals View curated inventory
06
User Flows
I began by designing the most foundational flows and features: Create new deal, create deal with recommended inventory (Called “Curated Packages”), and edit deal.
"Create New Deal" flows and UI were validated with a usability study with internal users.
A highly abbreviated example of one flow for this product is shown here.
InMobi's extensive targeting options are a key value proposition. To support this, the product needed to accommodate over 30 targeting types.
I facilitated card sorting exercises with users to ensure the options were organized intuitively. This resulted in five clear categories: Geography, Inventory, Audiences, Device Settings, and Integrations. Targeting types in each category were organized by frequency of use, as preferred by users in the exercise.
08
Curated Packages
UX research revealed that InMobi’s users wanted personalized inventory recommendations. While this was a key long-term goal, it was too ambitious for the beta launch.
To balance user needs with technical scope, I partnered with Product Marketing to create roughly 50 preset inventory recommendations called Curated Packages. Selecting a package pre-populated targeting and auction details in the deal creation flow.
09
Design System Overhaul
InMobi’s design system supported five B2B and internal products but was a patchwork of disconnected codebases, poor documentation, accessibility gaps, and usability issues. Its extensive components and tokens lacked defined use cases, leading to unnecessary bloat.
Process
I audited components across three codebases and partnered with engineering to consolidate them into a single source. Unused or duplicate components were deprecated, reducing bloat.
Design documentation was migrated from Sketch and Zeplin to Figma, where I updated component specs and color tokens for usability, accessibility, and consistency. I also established rules for build management and QA in Storybook.
I introduced new typography tokens using a screen-optimized typeface better suited for body copy and the complex tables common in InMobi’s products. Tokens were mapped to specific use cases, and a phased rollout plan helped reduce total typography tokens by nearly 50%.
Lastly, I defined icon specs to standardize visual style, sizing, and stroke/fill rules across the system.
26
New or Improved Components
30
New or Improved Color Tokens
63
New or Improved Icons
10
New Font Tokens Reduced from 19 original tokens
08
Bringing Updates to Existing Products
We used design system updates as a foundation to rethink what our products could achieve for users. For instance, we re-conceptualized the Home page of our product for app developers with a greater focus on their performance data and marketing of new features.
Let's work together!
I use proven processes to help product design teams align user needs to business goals. I can be reached at weissbergux@gmail.com.
