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PowerReviews

At PowerReviews, I've served the company first as the lead designer and then as its Director of User Experience while it grew from 8 to 150 employees. I contributed to the creation of our product discovery process, our design sprint workflow, the redevelopment of our core software offering, and the redesign of the customer dashboard experience.

Collecting & Displaying Review Content

Initially, PowerReviews' review display and collection software was outdated both in terms of technology and design. Despite the massive increase in mobile shopping, the display itself was not mobile compatible. Over the course of the first 18 months, I led research and design in transitioning the display and forms into the modern, mobile-friendly solutions they are today.

The design considerations were unique for this project: with over 1,000 sites, we had to account for countless variations in display as well as a visual design that leant itself to being customized by well-known brands.

Shoppers are Looking for Trust

No one wants to get screwed. We designed our review display to give a quick take-away on top while offering the full reviews below for more in-depth research.

A Person is Constantly Shopping

Be it on a commute or on their couch, people tend to browse for products at any place and time.We had to create a review display that gave the casual shoppers a way to research.

Capturing Reviews Requires Simplicity

We reduced superfluous product information, instructions, and decoration to create a simple, clear form for collecting product feedback.

Redesigning the Dashboard

Our initial dashboard was about 7 years old when we bit off a redesign. To that point it had been an afterthought that developed in a purely functional form. However, the home page didn't give you quick take-aways. The analytics tool was purely data tables lacking conclusions. Access to your collected content was blocked by cumbersome search forms. And the visual design was effectively non-existent.

With our redesign, we sought to build an intuitive tool with a consistent design system focused on being informative and and effective in task completion.

Before: Complex Forms Can Kill

The lack of organization and coupled with an intimidating number of fields served as a blocker for our customers in finding their content. The learning curve was high.

Before: Important Items Felt Buried

Showing all fields all of the time took focus away from the core review content most clients desired.

Before: Technology Trumped Clarity

Our legacy solution required many cumbersome steps to do even the most basic of tasks—such as rejecting a review.

After: More Friendly Forms

By grouping like fields and adding some personality and instruction, we created a more approachable and usable form for finding content.

After: Focus on Written Content

We removed or hid meta information to bring focus to the content itself. When scrolling through pages and pages of reviews, the reduction in visual noise makes it easier for customers to scan.

After: Simplify Actions

We used color coding and simple dropdowns for communicating and editing a piece of content's publish status. Making changes is quick and immediate.