Prospector
Built a 0→1 AI sales prospecting platform
- Company
- Vidyard
- Role
- Design Lead
- Category
- Web App
- Year
- 2023 → 2024
Vidyard Prospector simplifies sales prospecting by automating repetitive tasks, enabling sales users to focus on building stronger relationships with their buyers.
overview: From Chaos to Clarity
When I joined the Vidyard Prospector project two months after its inception, the team lacked a dedicated designer. Engineers had established a solid foundation, but there was a significant opportunity to enhance the product’s experience and better align it with user needs.
Assuming the role of Lead Designer, I collaborated across functions to guide this ambitious project to completion, delivering a polished product within three months. This case study delves into the pivotal decisions, challenges, and solutions that shaped this transformative tool, focusing on the milestones that defined its success.
Automating the art of prospecting
Vidyard Prospector reimagines sales prospecting with features designed to save time while maintaining the personal touch that builds trust:
- Automated Lead Generation:
Users can define their sales territory to generate qualified leads from integrated data sources.
- AI-Powered Personalization:
Every prospecting email is crafted using prospect data, with users able to refine the messaging to their liking.
- Outreach on Autopilot:
Designed for individuals, the product allows users to run their outreach process on autopilot.
Making Bold Design Decisions
When the project began, the legacy design system was still transitioning to Vue3. Engineers were already using Tailwind CSS, and I proposed extending it to the design side to stay on track. To ensure brand alignment, I adapted Tailwind to match our legacy design system, collaborating with stakeholders to secure buy-in. This approach kept us on schedule while influencing future updates for long-term consistency.
Enhancing Workflow Efficiency
Users often needed quick, contextual insights about prospects to personalize their outreach effectively. This posed a challenge: how could we surface the right information in a way that felt natural and streamlined?
To address this, I designed prospect profile cards, which displayed essential details like name, role, and company directly above each AI-generated email. These cards also included quick links to resources like LinkedIn and other social profiles, enabling users to gather additional context with minimal effort.
Love that when you generate an email, it links you to their LinkedIn profile. That’s super slick and such a time saver.
Improving User Activation
During the soft launch, we discovered that only 17% of users were completing the critical “territory creation” step. To address this, I designed an intuitive guided tour to simplify the process and provide clear next steps. This intervention increased activation rates to 42%, surpassing our target while delivering a more engaging user experience.
Scaling Feedback for Continuous Improvement
To continually refine the product, we implemented robust feedback mechanisms:
Introduced FullStory to watch real user sessions, uncovering friction points and opportunities for improvement. This led to “FullStory Fridays,” where the entire squad reviewed sessions together, fostering user empathy across the team.
Implemented an NPS system for general feedback, enabling users to share insights and opt in for interviews with the product team.
Used in-app feedback to let users rate and comment on email generations, directly informing iterative improvements.
Vidyard Prospector delivered tangible results within weeks of launch:
8%
Higher sign-ups than target after the first month of launch.
42%
Activation rate post launch, up from 17% during soft launch.
3 months
To design from scratch and launch to users.
“I check it in the morning and usually in the evening and just let it do its thing. It’s hands-off, and that’s what I wanted.”
Melissa SeekerSales manager at ISAM“There’s no way that I could do all of this research and even type up all of these emails every single day.”
Suzanne KirklandHead of Sales at AudioShake“This is crazy! I used to spend about 2 hours a day personalizing email sequences to be sent to 20 contacts. With this, the same task takes maybe 15 minutes.”
Chris ChiassonBusiness Dev. Lead at Commit“I’ve explored Apollo and a few others. They seem very capable, but at the same time, very cumbersome... I felt that this was really well streamlined and really easy to use.”
Fabrizio ColombiSenior Consultant at DecographicReflection: Designing for Impact
Vidyard Prospector was a defining project that demonstrated the power of user-first design. From bold decisions about design systems to fostering user empathy through FullStory Fridays, this project highlighted the importance of collaboration, agility, and a focus on outcomes.
A key learning was the importance of building trust in AI products. Over the following months, we prioritized designing features that prioritized transparency and gave more control to users to help them gain more confidence in the AI, ensuring it became a reliable part of their workflow.