Giving small businesses, a greater voice on social media

I joined Buffer as a product designer to improve the product experience and design features inspired by the company's new vision: giving small businesses a greater voice on social media.

The Buffer Browser Extension is designed to fit into the workflow of highly productive social media managers.

About Buffer

Buffer is the best way to drive traffic, increase fan engagement and save time on social media. It was founded in 2010 and today serves over 4 million customers.

As a Product Designer at Buffer I teamed-up with researchers, developers, managers, happiness hero’s (support) and customers to improve the product experience and design new features.

Redesigning a Core Product Experience

Being part of the product design team for over a year, I worked on many features and projects to improve the product experience. The biggest project I worked on was redesigning the composing experience in the Buffer browser extension. This workflow enables customers to build a queue of social media posts right from their browser.

The Buffer Extension before redesign:

The identified user problem:

The Buffer extension after redesign:

Designing a Visual Language

Buffer has been praised by customers for it’s easy to use interface and simplicity. Introducing new components increases the cognitive load of users. Therefore, when expanding the interface with new components, consistency and familiarity were always top of mind.

Components

A selection of components, I crafted for the new composing experience.

Iconography

A selection of icons, I crafted for the new composing experience. Icons at Buffer are distributed through a Github repository which generates a font that makes the icons available across the app.

Customer Research

Understanding the workflow and the problems of customers is key to improve the product experience. Here is an overview of research techniques I have practiced to get a better understanding of Buffer’s customers.

Interviewing customers remotely

Setting up customer surveys

User testing with high fidelity prototypes

Illustrations

Illustrations can simplify complex ideas or make ideas easier to consume. Here is a selection of illustrations I made for Buffer.

Landing page:

Buffer learning center:

Perks and benefits:

Instagram reminders:

Working Remotely

Buffer is a fully distributed team and works from multiple countries and continents. Being part of the Buffer team for over a year, I grew as a remote designer by experiencing the benefits and challenges of working remotely. I mostly work from a coworking space to stay inspired and keep a healthy work/life balance.

Desk at coworking space

Coworking space in Rotterdam

Communicating and collaborating on ideas with Invision

Project management with Trello

Team communication with Slack

Being in sync with the team is key

Curious to learn more about my work at Buffer? Get in touch through one of the links below.