Donny Merrill
All work

01Case study

Convoy & Compass

Helping ad campaign creators move forward with confidence.

Company
Revive Media
My role
Head of User Experience
Scope
Market research, user research, experience design, visual design
Shipped
June 2026
Convoy campaign configuration with progress navigation on the left and Compass estimates on the right
+84%

Increase in campaigns going live

−2DAYS

Average time-to-live per campaign

−66%

Customer help calls

5

Customer interviews that reframed the problem

AProblem

People were leaving mid-flow

Users were abandoning the campaign creation flow mid-process. When our team followed up, the pattern was consistent: people didn’t know if what they were building would actually work, and they didn’t know what steps were left before they could launch.

Rather than push forward uncertain, they’d stop and go ask a coworker how they’d handled a similar campaign — pulling them out of the product entirely, sometimes for good.

That told us we had two distinct problems, not one:

  • No confidence signal. Users had no way to gauge campaign performance before committing, so they second-guessed themselves.
  • No sense of progress. Users didn’t know what was required to get to “live,” so the path forward felt open-ended.
Original proposal screen with a single row of configuration buttons
FIG. 01Where it started. One row of buttons, no indication of what was done or what was left.

BResearch

It wasn’t a bug. It was a confidence gap.

I ran interviews with customers who churned or stalled during campaign creation and asked directly why they left. The answer wasn’t a bug or a confusing UI element. Users were making a judgment call they didn’t feel equipped to make, and their instinct was to find a human who’d made that call before rather than trust the tool.

“I didn’t know exactly what to include to make the presentation and proposal land, so I asked a coworker how they’d handled it, then came back and reworked mine.”
Customer interview, 1 of 5

CApproach

Three tools, matched to the question

  1. BalsamiqRapid wireframes for quick conversations with customers, before anyone got attached to a layout.
  2. ClaudeA clickable prototype, built fast, so we could test the real flow instead of describing it.
  3. FigmaThe pixel-perfect version for developer handoff.
Balsamiq wireframe of the campaign overview with estimates panel
FIG. 02Balsamiq wireframe used in customer conversations.
Clickable prototype of proposal setup running in a browser
FIG. 03Clickable prototype built with Claude for testing.

DSolution

A forecast and a checklist

Two connected interventions, addressing each problem directly:

  • Compass. An AI tool that predicts how well a campaign will perform before launch, giving users the confidence signal they were leaving the product to get from a coworker.
  • Progress navigation. A panel on the left side of the flow showing what’s complete and what’s still required to go live — replacing ambiguity with a clear checklist.
Compass panel showing estimated reach, impressions, market impact and recommendations
FIG. 04Compass: estimated reach, impressions and market impact, with a recommended next step.
Final Convoy layout with checklist navigation and Compass side panel
FIG. 05Shipped. Progress on the left, the work in the middle, Compass on the right.

EImpact

Campaigns that actually launch

  • 84% increase in campaigns going live
  • 2 days cut from average time-to-live
  • 66% decrease in customer help calls
  • Strong positive reception from customers