Mission Control
A comprehensive dashboard for ad campaign managers to monitor the performance of all their campaigns in one view. Features highly-customizable drag-and-drop sections.
Unless otherwise stated, all work presented on this page is my own.
My Role
Lead Designer
Design Mentor
Timeline
Design: May 2020 – Aug 2021
(Paused for two years)
Development: Sep 2023 – Dec 2023
Team Size (2020-2021)
2 Designers
1 Product Manager
1 UX Researcher
Team Size (2023)
1 Designer
1 Product Manager
1 UX Researcher
1 Tech Writer
~30 Engineers
Problem Statement
The old landing page
(not my work)
At the start, the landing page of our demand-side ad platform (DSP) looked like this.
After logging in, users would get dropped into this uninspiring campaign table.
This table lacked useful and actionable information, requiring users to navigate to other sections of the platform to gauge performance.
In fact, according to our research,
85% of users immediately clicked out to a different page without even glancing at this one.
Not exactly the best first impression of our platform.
Key Pain Points
No alerts — no way to tell at a glance which campaigns require attention
Limited organization — no way to filter or group campaigns; limited sorting functionality
Bland visuals — rows of raw numbers are difficult to visually parse
No actionability — interface provides no guidance on what actions to take for each campaign
Solution
Mission Control. A landing page dashboard that:
Shows all the information a campaign manager needs upfront with easy-to-read visuals
Notifies them of urgent tasks and gives them guidance on how to complete these tasks
Is fully customizable, with the ability to save and share dashboard views
The full final concept is to the right but it's a long one so I'll highlight the key features below!
Widgets
The basic building block of the dashboard is the widget. Each widget caters to a specific use case, and can be customized and rearranged. This ensures that each user gets a tailored view that is relevant to their individual needs.
Threshold Customization
Every campaign manager has different criteria for what constitutes an issue. Each widget has fully customizable settings for which issues to show, and when.
Multiple Shareable Views
Users can drag and drop widgets to rearrange them, save each setup as a different dashboard tab, and share their dashboard via a link so that everyone on their team can have access to the same views.
Feature Highlights
Of course, not everyone wants to put in the work to set up their dashboards.
We designed two specific widgets to fulfill the greatest user needs right out of the box.
At A Glance
Pacing
The pacing chart is front and center. Across the board, users told us this was their most important metric for campaign health.
Pie Charts
Users can choose pie charts to track specific metrics and set warning thresholds for when an issue requires their attention.
Requires Attention
Top Issues Chart
In addition to displaying the most frequent issues, the Top Issues chart can also be used as a filter. Clicking on the bar lets users drill down to that specific issue type.
Issue Details
The Requires Attention widget lists out items that require a user to take action and provides descriptions and recommendations for resolving those issues.
Tabs
The issues can be organized into different tabs and users can customize which issues they want to see.
Process
Initial Research
Interviewed the most active users of our platform to learn how they used the existing dashboard.
Cross-Team Brainstorm
Conducted brainstorm sessions with in-house campaign managers, product, engineering, research, and design.
Early Ideation
Sketches and low fidelity prototypes based off the results of the brainstorm.
Iterative Prototyping
Worked with UX Research team to create mocks, get feedback, improve mocks, get more feedback, improve further… until the final design.
Get Trapped in Resourcing Purgatory
The project was deprioritized August 2021 and went on hiatus.
We're Doing This?
In September 2023, I was suddenly informed that we were resourced to build this project after all, and by the way, are the designs still good?
Design Refresh
Updated designs to fit new style guide following a recent platform rebrand.
Validation
Reviewed mocks with users to make sure this design still met their needs.
The Finish Line!
After a long, hard road, the design above hit production in December 2023.
Initial Research
Pendo Analysis
We tracked usage of our platform using Pendo to determine how users interacted with the existing dashboard page.
Key Finding
85% of users immediately clicked out of the existing dashboard page without even looking at it.
Survey
We surveyed 63 respondents, asking about their current campaign management workflow.
Key Finding
Users prioritize campaigns with the largest revenue, focusing on pacing. Currently, users pull reports to obtain that information.
Interviews
We interviewed 9 participants from our in-house account management team to ask for their feedback and pain points.
Key Finding
Users want to see the performance and pacing of their active campaigns at a glance.
Competitive Analysis
We compared the landing pages of our 3 top competitors and listed out common features and the pros and cons of each approach.
Key Finding
Competitors organized their dashboards in a card-based format with some customization options.
Brainstorm
19
TOTAL PARTICIPANTS
3
Product Managers
4
Designers
1
Researcher
5
Engineers
6
Account Managers
Process
Due to the number of participants, we ran two separate sessions and consolidated the ideas at the end. Each 40-minute session ran as follows:
Set Ground Rules (3 mins)
Since we were pulling in participants who had never participated in a design brainstorm before, this section was for explaining how we'd be using our time.
UX Research Lightning Talk (10 mins)
To ensure all our participants understood the problem space, our UX researcher walked everyone through the highlights of our findings so far.
Idea Generation (5 mins)
On a shared Miro board, participants listed out ideas, one per sticky note.
Discussion (14 mins)
Everyone shared their ideas. If the discussion spawned new ideas, we added new sticky notes as well.
Grouping (4 mins)
We dragged and dropped sticky notes to group them by loose themes, then labeled each grouping with a blue sticky note.
Voting (3 mins)
Participants placed a thumbtack marker on the ideas that they thought most impactful.
After both sessions were complete, we consolidated the results from both brainstorm sessions into a single slide deck and began sketching out design solutions based on the results.
Sketch Phase
Overall Dashboard Layout
Problem: The existing dashboard is bland and lacks useful visualizations.
Solution: Interactive card-based view that presents data in an easily-digestible way.
Widgets
Problem: Data is difficult to parse. Users aren't sure what to do with this information.
Solution: Widgets tailored to specific use cases with recommendations and clear next steps.
Overall Dashboard Layout
Problem: Users have wildly different workflows and care about different metrics depending on their campaign properties.
Solution: Allow users to customize their dashboards for different use cases.
Low and Mid-Fidelity Iterations
Mid-Fidelity Version 1
Concept Description
This version is almost a direct translation of the ideas presented in the sketches. Notable details include:
The At A Glance and Requires Attention sections were identified early on as key user needs, though what these sections would actually include underwent several iterations.
The Calendar widget, which was fun to design but was ultimately discarded from future iterations due to being too cluttered and not a particularly useful visualization to users.
Details View
This panel opens when someone clicks the "Details" icon for an item.
Feedback
Huge improvement over the previous dashboard
The information hierarchy of certain widgets is unclear (e.g. Requires Attention)
Some widgets are too busy or not helpful (e.g. Calendar)
Users want more customization per widget
Needs an Audit Log to see what changes have been made to campaigns and when
Low-Fidelity Customization Workflow
Concept Description
In parallel with the overall dashboard and widget designs, I generated concepts for different interaction flows.
This is one screen of a low-fidelity prototype for a drag-and-drop workflow that allowed users to select widgets (then called "Charts") from a library and move them around the page.
Feedback
This design was well-received by users.
Ultimately put on hold by product in order to prioritize per-widget customization over full-page customization.
Mid-Fidelity Version 2
Concept Description
Made the following changes:
Made the At A Glance and Requires Attention widgets more eye-catching
Added filters to each card
Added Audit Log, which nearly 80% of users from previous feedback sessions said they would require
Additional Discarded Widget Ideas
Feedback
All relevant information is visible. "Everything is right there."
List of issues is easy to understand, and users like that the issue description also includes recommendations for resolving the issue (not shown in this screen)
Some lingering questions about what qualifies as an issue. Would like the ability to define criteria for when an item appears on this list
Having so many colors is visually distracting; not sure what to focus on
Users would like the charts and visuals to be more interactive
A Note on Timeline and Methodology
Though I've only presented a few screens above, all workflows were built out as full mid-fidelity interactive prototypes for user testing.
Additional screens include but are not limited to:
Error and warning messages
Empty/No-data states for widgets and charts
Step-by-step workflows for filtering, page customization, and sharing dashboards
Full user journey mapping from the dashboard to other parts of the platform
Each user feedback session took roughly one month to recruit participants, run through usability tests, consolidate feedback, and iterate on designs.
As such, different areas of the dashboard were often designed and tested in parallel to minimize downtime.
In any given quarter I would also divide my time between this and one or two other large projects, amongst smaller design tasks.
Example Prototype
Each interaction flow involves only the screens in a row following a black title card. This prototype includes multiple such flows.
All of the different testing flows and dev-oriented pages (e.g. redlines) were linked into one prototype for easy reference during testing and development.
Impact
The launch of Mission Control was met with verbal praise from users, but let's look at the numbers:
81%
of users remain on the Mission Control page when managing their campaigns, compared to 15% previously.
94%
of Mission Control users make use of the Requires Attention widget to view Line Issues
In a follow-up satisfaction survey, users rated Mission Control on average:
83/100
for ease of use
81/100
for speed and responsiveness
78/100
for total user satisfaction
7/7
for Overall Utility
“Definitely the best dashboard of the big four that I've used. I would definitely use it every day. Everything is visually in front of you and you can make quick decisions without having to pull a report.”
“You guys kinda killed this. The dashboard looks fun. I'm such a visual person so I love stuff like this.”
“Oooh I love this. This looks really good compared to what I'm used to. Everything is right there. Anything the system can do that can help troubleshoot and gather as much information as possible in one spot helps us to be more successful.”
What's Next?
The "Top 5 Underperforming Lines" widget was created by a fellow designer and is not my work. The AI Assistant panel, however, is mine.
Mission Control was designed to be scalable. Adding more features to it is a simple matter of creating new widgets.
Before my time with this company came to a close, I was working on an AI assistant that integrated with Mission Control.
You can see a preview of it to the left, and learn more about the process behind it in my GenAI Design Principles case study!
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© 2025 Eugenia Lee