Using Research to Guide BENLabs' Shift to Tech

or How UX Research alleviated ambiguity and helped shape Product Strategy.
Equipping creators with tools to Understand Audiences and Inspire Content
An audacious plan to be become an essential part of the content creator workflow.
A snapshot of Service Map that was created. The map reveals the many levels of connection and manual work that occurs behind the scene to get a "Brand Deal" done.
A snapshot of Service Map created to reveal the many levels of work that were needed to complete a "Brand Deal." 
Background
BENLabs was undergoing a major transformation. It wanted to shift from being a service company into a tech company. Naturally, this was a big change. New people were hired and whole new teams were spun up. It was an exciting time and feelings of skepticism and optimism ran rampant across both new and existing employees. Executive leadership was still forming a new company vision, leaving the Product team (and its new VP) with the difficult task of developing a roadmap amid considerable uncertainty.
Problem
How can I best support BENLabs’ tech transformation and provide leadership with solid UX guidance in a highly ambiguous setting?
I was the first UX designer hired and was just getting familiar with how the company operated. I was given a rundown on the overall vision, but still wasn't sure on how the tech transformation would look like. So the question arose: How can I best support BENLabs’ tech transformation and provide leadership with solid UX guidance in a highly ambiguous setting? The answer was, as it usually is, through research.
Initial Research - Understanding the Brand Deals process
BENLabs had two profitable branches of business. One branch focused on product placements in TV and movies (for instance, KFC in Stranger Things). The other branch focused on “Sponsored Content” or “Brand Deals.” Brand deals was the newer of the two and was decided to be the the vanguard of the tech transformation.

Even though the Brand Deals business was newer, it was still a long and sometimes tedious process, one that involved a lot of manual labor from many different contributors. Because it could be so time-consuming, it was thought to be a perfect candidate for a tech transformation. But how exactly did the Brand Deals process work? What did it look like? What did it involve? These were all questions that needed to be answered, especially for the new product and tech leadership, as well as the many new hires in the Product, Tech, and UX teams.
To answer these questions, I knew I had to start by interviewing the key players involved in this process. I needed to interview our internal associates involved in the brand deals,  I needed to interview content creators, and I needed to interview what we called "brand agencies," or the companies that were looking to hire influencers to promote their products.

I started by setting up 12-24 interviews with each cohort and documenting the interviews in notion. These interviews uncovered a few surprising sets of patterns.

One of the first patterns to emerge was the consistent amount of time required for associates to find the right type of content creators. The second set of patterns revolved around content creators and how they operated. Lastly, a set of patterns emerged for the brand agencies, mirroring those observed among BENLabs associates, but also revealing specific pain points experienced by agencies during collaborations with BENLabs. Very interesting stuff!
Analysis - Connecting the dots and revealing a bigger picture
After all the interviews, there was naturally a lot of stuff to go through. I wanted to see if I could form a type of map of their process so I reviewed all the notion notes and jotted down events, questions, thoughts, and anything else that was interesting into notes in Figjam.
A snapshot of Figjam sticky notes made from the interviews with our internal associates.
Eventually, I was able to get to a point where I was able to put together a rough idea of their process broken down by categories or events. By doing this process, I was able to build a type of "proto-map" that helped illustrate what the process looked. This was extremely useful because it allowed me to identify areas where I was still unsure of what was going on or had additional questions that I need to answer.
The initial pass on recreating the journey our internal associates told me that they go through when working on a Brand Deal.
Workshops - Following through and clarifying questions
To answer the questions I had (and to verify if the map I was building out was indeed correct), I gathered the internal associates together for a workshop. I had to run a few workshops because not everyone could make a single date, which worked well.
The internal associates were able to clarify things that I didn't quite understand and add a lot of additional info. It was extremely helpful.
With this info, I had a pretty solid grasp of their process and an understanding of where and why they felt happy at some points and frustrated at others. Things were coming together! With this part of the research at a good place, I was then able to switch over to the notes I took with our content creators and brand agencies.  
Some questions that arose after reviewing my notes.
Personas - Identifying patterns and behaviors in content creators
The key difference that separated content creators was their level of organization. The highly successful creators had this process down so well that they could delegate most of these tasks to a hired team.
When I started reviewing my notes with content creators, I noticed that there existed a certain process that all content creators went through. How well they executed this process directly related to how successful their audience reach was. One of the key differentiators between a creator that was aspiring versus a creator that was established was how optimized their process was; creators that were newer exhibited a process that was more chaotic and less structured while the more experienced creators had this process extremely refined.
A proto-persona illustrating the confusion a newly aspiring content creator feels when going through a Brand Deals process.
With these insights, I started sketching quick mental models of content creators, categorized by follower size and their experience of the Brand Deals process. Additionally, I noted their motivations and pain points. These sketches eventually developed into personas that became foundational to BENLabs’ transformation and new product vision. They clarified who we could help, what they needed, and where in the process we could have the most impact.
A proto-persona of a content creator that has established themselves and their journey during a Brand Deal
Service Map - Putting it all together
One of the final steps was to combine what I learned about our internal teams with the insights from content creators. I structured this following a Service Design blueprint, highlighting both the content creators’ journey and the journey of our internal associates through the Brand Deals process. This blueprint was ideal for visually communicating areas with high levels of associate interaction, allowing leadership and product teams to quickly spot opportunities for improvement.
A detailed look at the service map created. This highlights the multiple layers of interactions our internal associates had to go through to produce just a single Brand Deal.
Outcome
This work directly contributed to BENLabs’ new product strategy, offering valuable insights to leadership and the product team. With the service map, they could quickly see areas overloaded with manual work, identifying steps where technology could automate tasks. Additionally, the new content creator personas helped leadership and product teams develop impactful features to better serve creators and simplify their experiences.

This process also boosted morale among existing employees who were skeptical about the tech transformation. They felt heard and saw their contributions making a tangible impact. Overall, I’m proud of this project and its positive results.