Jessi Contreras

About

SpeakEasy Political offers tech-enabled tools for political candidates to create and run digital and mail campaigns. In 2021, I was brought on to design The Media Studio by SpeakEasy Political, a new web platform aimed at political consultants managing multiple clients and campaigns. The goal was to grow the business by offering a more flexible, scalable tool for advanced users.

I led the product design efforts from early discovery to handoff, including:

• Defining user personas
• Leading user research and usability testing
• Designing UX flows and UI
• Creating a fully documented design system to support development

* Click on images to zoom out *

Understanding the existing platform

To ground our work, I began by auditing SpeakEasy’s existing web app. This included heuristic and accessibility reviews to identify UX gaps and set a quality baseline.

Key findings:

• The original platform did not meet WCAG AA accessibility standards

• Campaign creation flows were rigid and overly linear
• Profile and account areas lacked structure and clarity
• The homepage presented limited value; a dashboard approach would better support user goals

Marketing & Competitor Analysis

I conducted a benchmark analysis of direct and adjacent tools. The political ad-tech space revealed few competitors, most with outdated interfaces and complex user flows. Their tone was also very formal — often to the point of feeling cold.

Opportunities identified:

• Stand out with modern, accessible UI

• Use a more human, approachable tone

• Create a platform designed for consultants with flexibility and scalability

Defining User Needs

Together with stakeholders, I helped define primary personas: consultants managing multiple clients and campaigns. I then conducted user interviews to identify key needs and challenges:

New platform Focus Points:

• Users needed to track and edit multiple campaigns simultaneously

• Audience targeting was a critical (and stressful) step — better guidance was essential
• The platform had to be fast to learn and easy to navigate due to time-sensitive campaign cycles

These insights shaped both the MVP and long-term product vision.

Aligning with Engineering

The engineering team was also new, so I organized and facilitated cross-functional workshops with the PM, developers, and stakeholders. We co-created the information architecture and collaboratively defined the MVP scope, ensuring technical feasibility and business alignment from the start.

This early alignment helped reduce rework and built strong communication channels for the rest of the project.

UX & UI Design

With a shared roadmap in place, I moved into wireframing key user flows. As a new brand identity was also in development, I proposed and led usability testing to validate both the visual direction and campaign builder experience before development began.

Usability Testing & A/B Experiments

We tested with potential users and internal support staff, those most familiar with real campaign-building needs.

Results:

• 100% of participants responded positively to the new visual identity, citing clarity and ease of use

• A/B tests helped us choose a flexible campaign builder, allowing users to add information incrementally and save drafts as needed, a major improvement for multitasking consultants

Design system Leadership

I built and documented a design system using Atomic Design principles to ensure scalability and consistency across the platform. Once the foundational components were in place, front-end developers were able to begin implementation.

“This is one of the most organized handoffs I’ve worked with — it saved us hours of back-and-forth.”

– Front-End Developer, SpeakEasy Political

The design system reduced friction and accelerated development, especially as new engineers joined the team.

Outcomes

The Media Studio launched as a beta in August 2022.

Impact:

• Within 2 weeks, 10% of existing SpeakEasy users had migrated to the new platform
• The product was on track to reach its target of 150 new users by August 2023
• Internal teams and leadership were highly satisfied with both the design quality and the cross-functional process

Want to try out the Interactive Prototype? Reach out to me!

What is next?

• New payment method integrations are currently in development

• The audience targeting flow is under review for optimization, especially as the business considers expanding beyond political clients