Self-Service Advertising Platform — Chloe Negron

The Post's print advertising teams faced a particularly challenging set of circumstances in 2012, when print circulation was abruptly falling and legacy internal systems were showing signs of wear and tear. In my first large-scale product overhaul at The Post, my fellow designers and I set out to build an easy-to-use online system that would allow users to create print ads using a digital interface.

Using heuristics, ethnography, user stories, and regular user-testing, my design team and I created a user experience designed to seamlessly allow independent consumers and business owners the ability to place an ad in the newspaper's Classifieds section. We knew Craigslist would always provide the user-base with a compelling (free) alternative, so I designed the experience to provide transparency and customer-service throughout each step of the process, providing users with immediate gratification and a return on their investment.

The visual system created was utilitarian and simplistic, with punches of bright coral and rich blues to stay true to The Washington Post brand while providing modernity and trust.

The complicated back-end system relied on Java and multiple databases, and the front-end was built with Ajax to store user data in-browser and cut down on server calls.

Above: Step-by-step screenshots of the finished product.

Above: An overview of the wireframes process.

Above: The visual system.

The final product launched in early 2013. Check it out..