Summary
I created digital models and assets for engineering and marketing teams to be used with flagship product "Zumi"(Winner of CES Best Of 2019 Innovation Award) for a audience of 20000+.
Background
Robolink is a EdTech startup company based in San Diego. Robolink creates products like Zumi, CoDrone and Rokit that makes learning how to code easy for kids and adults. This includes the basics of code but also the more advanced concepts like computer vision easier to learn. Robolink products are widely used in the USA and Korea and has a customer base of over 20000+ and works with over 1000+ schools.
Role
At Robolink, I was one of only two designers, whenever a design related task arose, it was my job to fulfill this need. I worked:
- With the CEO on marketing campaigns where I learned how to use A/B testing to see how my ads improved over time and what made users return to the site and buy our products.
- Built digital assets for the engineering team to be used to test the Zumi products and for Zumi competitions. I also delegated tasks to the high school interns in order to get things done on time.
- Working with the learning center team on their mail and newsletter campaign
- Worked with the lead designer on updating the WordPress website
I made sure to get feedback from the teams throughout my designs especially from the other designers on the team.
Marketing Assets
I created web ads for Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas advertising campaigns. This was my first time working with advertisements so it was a little tricky but as I got feedback from the marketing team and from my A/B tests I was able to make better ads with each iteration.
For each ad campaign, I used Adobe Illustrator to create 7 different sizes of ads to fit different types of views. These were the standard sizes for web ads this saved the marketing team time in terms of converting the ads to the appropriate sizes and we can also use the different variations in A/B tests to identify which type is the most effective.
Being new to advertising I wanted to understand how Robolink created its ads in the past. I was given this ad which was used for a past Halloween. My first thought was its needs to improve in terms of visual design and I was excited to change it in that manner.
This is the ad I created for Halloween 2019. I was shocked to find out my ad didn’t do well. I was certain that a better visual design would draw customers clicks. What I had completely forgotten was who the customer was? I had assumed the customers werre kids fascinated by robots but in reality, it was a completely different customer. I was told the customers were partially consisted of kids but it was mostly parents and educators.
I redesigned the ads for Cyber Monday and Black Friday with these new users in mind and my ads improved significantly. My ads were still not performing as well as the ads from last year. So I had to understand my user a little bit more. I did more research and asked for more feedback. I used personas and from A/B testing found that users responded better to lifestyle images than images of just the product.
This was the final ad I created for the Christmas campaign. This ad did a lot better than all the other ads and performed slightly better in some areas than the previous Christmas ad.
Sleeves for Zumi World
In order to ready the new product Zumi for launch, we hosted competitions where kids had to complete different tasks in a mock-up field like moving Zumi from one side to another, recognizing stop signs and taking the most efficient route. By creating external lego sleeves (covers for large lego blocks), sleeves that represented actual buildings, I was able to create a more enjoyable experience for all the competitors. This was done by improving the virtual field and overall visual aspects the field used for this activity.
The sleeves were not as easy as it sounded to make. In order to save money, we printed the sleeves on canvas and cut them out. So we had to design 2D but then cut it out and glued it to make it 3D. When designing I had to think about folds and other dimensions.
After sketching and prototyping with A4 paper I was able to scale the designs to a canvas of 36x24 and 36*48.
Course Flyers
I redesigned the flyers that contained the course information for Robolinks classes which was sent all around the US.
What I've learned
My experience at Robolink was pretty challenging, I was a full-time student, worked at two research labs at UCSD all while dealing with my design responsibilities. Robolink taught me how to prioritize my work and solve one problem before moving on to the next. The morning standups and using Asana taught me how to manage my time better and improve communication between me and other teams. The two most important lessons I learned are “its better to be early than late” and its “better to overdo something than underdo it”.