Adobe Campaign: Converting a native Windows app to a web app

Adobe Campaign as a first-grade citizen in Experience Cloud

Legacy Adobe Campaign Classic (ACC) had a complex interface that caused a disconnect in Adobe’s vision and the risk of losing $200M ARR clients.

We aimed to elevate Campaign in Experience Cloud by using Spectrum patterns.

I joined the ACC team after working 2 years on an internal project called Sophia. I was the only designer on the team for the first 9 months, and then 2 more designers joined.

My contract’s goal was to make sure the ACC team kickstarts the development phase without any hiccups. As a secondary goal I had to make sure I transfer any valuable knowledge and process I’ve established to my new design teammates.

Top 5 strategic initiatives

What I did to make it work

1. I introduced a flexible 3-month contract, then we followed with two fixed contracts spanning each 12 and 5 months. Each contract featured task-centric and outcome-driven design roadmaps
2. Fostering collaboration between product and engineering teams but also cross-team partnerships with the Spectrum Patterns team to ensure alignment
3. Validating critical user flows through a UserLabs user testing session
4. Adopting existing Spectrum patterns and building on top of them
5. Maintaining ongoing design reviews of implemented code for consistency
6. Engaging in operational and programmatic tasks, expediting processes via JIRA ticket management

What value did I bring?

Happier users. Pre-release product had positive alpha user feedback, boosting customer satisfaction and paving the way for increased annual revenue (because people are not afraid that the product’s dying)

Better team collaboration. The design ops processes and structures we established saved billable hours and improved the quality of the team communication.

Accelerated time-to-market. Adobe hired a single contractor and started the development of the new app in less than 9 months with no design bottlenecks.

Campaign’s success as an inspiration. Campaign’s rapid turnaround has been used as an example to inspire other teams to collaborate closely internally.

What I learned

This team expanded my horizons, proving to me the profound outcomes achievable through collaboration. With more than 50 people working on the project on a daily basis it felt like being part of something significant.

I learned a lot about operations and product management, research and design ops.

Reference design flow

• Create a new email
• Create a new campaign
• Decision tree copying and pasting experience
• Workflow activity spec sheets

Project Credits