The media buyer who will use your DSP every day is not the same person as the agency CMO who signs the contract. Winston Francois builds the product design and research programs that make your platform usable for the practitioner while remaining defensible in the enterprise evaluation process.
Why AdTech Product Design Falls Behind
AdTech dashboards are built for feature completeness, not for operator workflows
Most AdTech platform interfaces are designed by adding capability – each new feature adds a panel, a setting, or a report view – without a coherent workflow architecture underneath. The result is dashboards where a media buyer can find any data they need but cannot complete their primary tasks without 12 steps, 4 tabs, and institutional knowledge about where things are hidden. Feature-complete but workflow-broken interfaces require extensive onboarding, produce high support ticket volume, and create the 'your platform is hard to use' reputation that costs deals in competitive evaluations.
User research is skipped because AdTech companies assume they know how buyers use the product
The assumption that AdTech founders and product managers know how media buyers and ad ops teams use the platform in practice is consistently wrong. Founders build for how they think the job should be done; practitioners have workarounds, shortcuts, and habitual patterns that are invisible to the development team. Without formal user research – structured observation sessions, usability testing, and workflow diagramming with actual platform users – product roadmaps optimize for features that make sense to engineers and miss the changes that would most improve daily operator experience.
Enterprise evaluation processes include product walkthroughs that sink deals on UI clarity
Enterprise AdTech procurement often involves a platform evaluation session where the buyer's operational team pilots the product. These sessions are where technically superior products lose to competitors with cleaner interfaces. The technical evaluator on the buy side can assess capability from a feature list; they cannot immediately assess usability without hands-on time. When the pilot session produces confusion, support requests, and the comment 'it's powerful but complicated', the evaluation committee anchors on the difficulty rather than the capability.
Self-serve transition requires UI quality that managed service models do not demand
AdTech companies transitioning from managed service to self-serve discover that their platform UI was designed for expert operators – their own account managers – not for clients who have never opened the platform before. The managed service model lets poor UI persist because there are people on your team who know how to navigate it. Self-serve requires that a media buyer with no prior context can complete their first campaign without calling support. The UI gap between managed-ready and self-serve-ready is larger than most AdTech companies estimate when they plan the transition.
How We Approach Product Design and Research for AdTech
The engagement starts with a current-state research sprint. We run 6-8 structured observation sessions with existing platform users – actual media buyers, ad ops managers, or other practitioners depending on your user type – watching them complete their primary tasks on the platform without guidance. This session is recorded (with user permission) and analyzed for workflow friction points: steps where users hesitate, features that are visited rarely despite high value, and workarounds that indicate design gaps. The friction map from this research is the foundation for all subsequent design work.
User persona development documents the gap between the practitioner persona (who uses the platform daily) and the buyer persona (who evaluates and purchases). AdTech frequently has a 3-persona stack: the executive buyer who approves the contract, the platform administrator who configures the account, and the daily operator who runs campaigns. Design decisions that optimize for the executive demo experience often fail the daily operator, and vice versa. Making the distinction explicit in persona documentation lets the product team make intentional tradeoffs rather than defaulting to the same single-user model.
Workflow architecture redesign starts from the practitioner's job, not from the platform's feature set. We document the 5-8 primary tasks a daily platform user completes, map the current steps required for each, and identify which steps can be consolidated, reordered, or eliminated. This workflow mapping typically reveals 3-5 high-impact redesign opportunities that significantly reduce task completion time without requiring new feature development. Simplification of existing flows produces more immediate user experience improvement than adding new features.
UI design and prototyping produces testable mockups of the redesigned workflows. We prototype the highest-impact workflow changes, run usability testing with 4-6 practitioner users, and iterate based on test results before handing designs to engineering. This prototype-test-iterate cycle catches design problems before they become engineering problems, which is significantly less expensive than discovering UI issues post-build.
Design system documentation creates a component library and interaction standard that engineering and future design work can draw from. AdTech platforms that lack design systems accumulate visual inconsistency with every sprint – different button styles, inconsistent form behavior, misaligned spacing – that compounds into a product that looks like it was built by different teams at different times. Which it was. The design system prevents that accumulation going forward.
What we deliver
- User research report – friction map from observation sessions with 6-8 practitioner users documenting workflow pain points
- User persona documentation – practitioner, administrator, and buyer persona stack with distinct design implications
- Workflow architecture redesign – top 5 primary workflows redesigned for efficiency with before/after comparison
- Interactive prototypes – testable mockups of redesigned workflows with usability test results
- Design system documentation – component library and interaction standards for engineering use
The product quality bar for winning AdTech enterprise deals is not 'impressive in a demo'. It is 'the practitioner can train themselves on it'. The difference between these two bars is a workflow architecture problem, not a feature problem – and workflow architecture is what product design research fixes.
Our Methodology
Winston Francois runs AdTech product design and research engagements in two phases. Phase one (weeks 1-6) is research: user observation sessions, practitioner interviews, workflow documentation, and persona development. No design decisions are made during this phase – we are in observation mode. The research deliverable is a friction map and design priority stack that the product team can validate and adjust before phase two begins.
Phase two (weeks 7-16) is design: workflow architecture redesign, UI mockup production, prototype development, usability testing, and iteration. We produce testable artifacts at every stage so the product team can validate design direction before significant engineering time is committed. The phase two deliverable is a production-ready design system, redesigned workflow specifications, and an implementation priority ranking.
Handoff to engineering happens with full specification: interaction documentation, component definitions, edge case handling, and accessibility requirements. We are available for engineering questions during implementation and conduct a final design review before the redesigned flows go live. Post-launch we run a second round of user observation with the same practitioner participants from phase one to measure friction reduction.
How We Work
Product design and research engagements are scoped by phase. Phase one (research) is a fixed-fee engagement running 6 weeks, priced at $30,000-$55,000 depending on number of user interviews and documentation scope. Phase two (design) runs 8-10 weeks at $45,000-$80,000 depending on scope of workflow redesign and design system complexity. Companies that do not have bandwidth for a full 16-week engagement often start with phase one only and use the research deliverable to prioritize internal engineering resources.
Researcher access to existing users is the one thing we cannot provide ourselves – recruiting practitioner participants requires a warm introduction from your customer success or account management team. We handle all scheduling, session facilitation, recording, and analysis. We need your team to make the introductions and explain what the sessions are for to reduce participant anxiety about 'evaluating their performance'.
Design iteration is collaborative: we present design directions in working sessions with your product leadership and incorporate feedback within 48 hours. We use Figma for all design work because it allows real-time stakeholder visibility without requiring a separate review meeting for every design update. Design decisions are documented with rationale so the engineering team and future designers understand why specific choices were made.
Engagements are project-based rather than ongoing retainer by default. Ongoing design retainers for new feature work are available at $15,000-$25,000 per month after the initial engagement is complete.
- Documented friction reduction in primary operator workflows based on pre/post observation
- Enterprise evaluation performance improvement from cleaner demo and pilot experience
- Self-serve readiness assessment and design path for managed-to-self-serve transition
- Design system that prevents visual inconsistency accumulation in future development
If your adtech company needs product design & research leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does product design and research cost for an AdTech company?
A full engagement covering both research and design phases runs $75,000-$135,000 for an AdTech platform with moderate complexity. Research-only engagements (if you have an internal design team to implement) run $30,000-$55,000.
How long does a product design and research engagement take for an AdTech platform?
Research phase takes 6 weeks from kickoff to deliverable. Design phase takes 8-10 weeks from research handoff to production-ready design system.
How does the design team work with our product and engineering teams?
We work alongside your product team, not in place of it. Product leadership defines requirements and priorities; we research and design against those priorities.
What makes Winston Francois different from a UX agency for AdTech?
Most UX agencies optimize for visual quality and usability best practices without understanding the specific context of AdTech operator workflows. We know what a campaign management workflow looks like, why pacing graphs are checked every 15 minutes, and what makes a media buyer's life easier versus what makes a product demo impressive to a CMO.
How do you measure success in a product design engagement for AdTech?
Primary metrics are task completion time reduction (measured in the post-launch observation sessions versus baseline from phase one), support ticket volume change for the redesigned workflows (tracked with your engineering team's help), and user satisfaction ratings from the practitioner cohort we worked with. Secondary metrics are enterprise evaluation pilot success rate (tracked by your sales team in competitive deals) and self-serve onboarding completion rate if the engagement included self-serve workflow design.
What type of AdTech company needs product design research most urgently?
AdTech companies in one of three situations: enterprise deals consistently losing on product complexity in pilot sessions despite winning on feature comparison, a planned transition from managed service to self-serve where the current UI was designed for expert operators, or post-acquisition integration where two platform UIs need to be unified. Any of these situations means design debt is actively costing revenue.
