In-App Message FOUNDATIONs

Research and roadmaps for a multi-year vision

DURATION
Multiple rounds of research and iterations across one year

IMPACT
Research insights used across future quarters for a newly-formed team, high-level vision for multi-year roadmaps, completing smaller wins while setting technical foundations for future product growth

ROLE
Research and vision setting

TEAM
PM, EM, 3 shared engineering resources

Introduction

For my five years at Braze, I was the first dedicated design owner for in-app messages. This project page outlines the work we did in my first year at the company to understand the product, customers, opportunities, and technical landscape. It includes discovery research, as well as some smaller projects that fed into the future initiatives of 🚫SURVEYS and the 🚫DRAGANDDROPEDITOR.

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INTERNNNNNNN

Beginning at Braze, new team, PM, product verticals

Updates hadn’t happened since ?????2016????, no research conducted before

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IAM is flagship product,

Technical background, competitive insights

  • Team growth/split, competing priorities - started pre-teams, reorged to dedicated team. Had split resources (PM) and hard time estimating LOE but saw the opportunities and advocated/prioritized roadmap and resourcing

  • Working with SDKs: G3 refresh, universal html, asset uploads, custom CSS, Dark mode, Notched devices, Roku,

Process Overview

blah blah process insights

The Problem

Users want to create more sophisticated and on-brand messages quickly (without using Custom HTML), with layouts and templates beyond Full-Screens, Modals, and Slideups.

“Time of custom HTML's is gone - you can't advise your clients to develop custom HTML's almost to every need we have related to IAM's.”

Research

xx

Process

Opportunities & Constraints

Opportunities: HOW MIGHT WE

  1. (have numbers to relate to opportunities below)

IAMs need to…

Be flexible = rearranging and sizing of elements

  1. Solve many use cases OOTB = Templates for common use cases, flexibility to create new templates

  1. Be Easily Customized = Onbrand, seamless in-app experience

  1. Composed easily = Less reliance on developers, like plug-and-play KvPs, attribute collection, custom templates (fewer HTML campaigns!)

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User Needs:

Create campaign without coding

Most wanted templates type:

surveys, paginated messages, video messages, and multi-step/chained

Font support and greater design freedom at the dashboard level

Preview capabilities in the dashboard

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Constraints:

  1. Native SDKs

  2. Super meaty technical milestones

  3. Limited resources

  4. Existing UI, no visual design updates

  5. Delayed adoption

Milestone 1: Native upgrades

Milestone 2: Universal HTML & Assets

These milestones were applied to both in-app messages, and other parts of the product. They were designed with flexibility in mind, and set UX patterns for the following.

  1. New live, interactive preview

  2. DnD asset upload with zip unpack and asset source ref replacement

Milestone 3: Quick Wins

While the team was working on larger initiatives, we also sprinkled in some smaller wins that feed into the goals of increasing flexibility and adaptability of in-app messages.

  1. Custom CSS

  2. Dark Mode

  3. Notched Device support

  4. Roku

Outcomes

  1. Lagging adoption

Reflections