Helping ad teams find the audience data they already had, instead of rebuilding it.

Roku's data management platform is where ad teams find and define the audiences behind every campaign. After a decade, people had given up searching it.

The tool was built about ten years earlier so the ad data team could look up customer attributes and set custom parameters for tracking campaign performance. Over time it became hard to use. When users couldn't find a relevant attribute, they created their own, or kept a separate Excel file instead. The company estimated this cost $3 billion in productivity over nine years.

Users weren't short on data. They couldn't find it, couldn't request it in the tool, and couldn't see where their requests stood.

Product partnered with UX research to define the main problems. Three stood out:

• Searching for a customer attribute was poorly designed
• Creating a segment meant contacting the data operations team over Slack or email
• Once a request was sent, there was no way to track it

Every failed search became a new duplicate segment, and every request became another thread in someone's inbox.

With limited budget and staffing, I scoped the redesign around the biggest pain points, and a design that could be phased in over time.

We prioritized three things: streamline the existing workflow, design for phased rollout, and adopt the new ad internal tools design language so engineering could build faster. With the other designer, I audited the existing platform and mapped the end-to-end flow for sales and admin users. That map became the benchmark for every later decision.

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From the audit and research feedback, the product lead and I set four principles to guide both designers through concepting.

The columns users already knew, rebuilt around filtering, one clear primary action, and fewer buttons per row.

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Before · existing segments page

1. A row of navigation tabs across the top, each its own entry point
2. No filtering to help users look items up
3. Multiple action buttons on every row, easy to confuse

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After · redesigned segments page

1. A filters panel built around how users search, combined with AND logic
2. One primary action, top right
3. Columns carried over from the old system, with clearer labels
4. Row actions revealed only after selecting a checkbox

Pain points solved

• Advanced lookup
• Fewer, clearer actions

Two core flows: one for sales and data operations users creating segments, one for admins approving their requests.

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Scenario 1 · Creating a segment

1. A lower learning curve for building a segment
2. Front-end UI matched to Tarmac, Roku's campaign order management tool

Pain points solved

• Steep learning curve

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Scenario 2 · Approving requests

1. One page where admins review every incoming request
2. Statuses that show admins what needs action

Pain points solved

• Admin work pulled out of Slack and email into the platform
• A smaller offline gap between admins and the sales team

Beyond the core flows, I guided the other designer in writing developer onboarding documentation for the core flow, along with specs covering every UI component state.

Two weeks of beta cut duplicate segments by 20%.

I left Roku before the full release. The platform went on to ship to the internal ad data team, built on the flows, principles, and developer documentation we put in place.