Visualizations for Digital Marketing Analysts
All work
Data visualization · Centro

Visualizations for digital marketing analysts — the designs outlasted the roadmap

Discovery sessions and analysis of existing research reports revealed two distinct analyst personas with very different needs. I designed a suite of advanced visualizations validated with users — fully ready to build when the project was deprioritised before I left.

Overview

Marketing analysts working in a time crunch

Digital marketing analysts want to see their clients' key performance indicators quickly and accurately. Basic visualizations can be frustrating — wasting precious screen space without helping analysts understand the story in the data. More advanced visualization, on the other hand, helps the analyst communicate how a campaign is progressing and make informed predictions about its success.

At Centro, I worked with analysts to identify the questions they actually needed answered about their campaigns — and designed the visualizations that would answer them.

The discovery finding that shaped everything

"Not all analysts are the same. Expert analysts want depth and dual axes. Generalists want speed and self-evident summaries. Designing one chart for both users serves neither well."

This split emerged from interviews and shaped the entire visualization strategy — advanced views for power users, at-a-glance summaries for everyone else.

Research & discovery

Two types of analyst, two types of need

  1. 01 Expert analysts are comfortable with numbers and already know what to look for in the data. Advanced charts with dual axes, tiled comparisons, and layered information help them gain deeper understanding quickly.
  2. 02 Generalist users — often one person managing planning, execution, and analysis for all campaigns — are pressed for time. They want quick access to basic metrics. Information should be self-explanatory, and campaign success or failure should be immediately obvious.
  3. 03 Reports were the source of truth. Analysts were already producing detailed reports for clients. Analysing those reports revealed the recurring questions users were trying to answer — and which visualizations could answer them faster.

Discovery artifacts

Starting with the questions, not the charts

Rather than designing visualizations and asking if they were useful, I worked backwards from the questions analysts were already asking: "What does my client most need to know?" and "What do I need to know to serve them?"

Interviews and report analysis surfaced a consistent set of themes — pacing, delivery, performance over time, and projected outcomes — that became the foundation for the visualization concepts.

User needs

Analytics that help my client
Analytics that help my client — the questions analysts need to answer for the people paying for campaigns.
Analytics that help me
Analytics that help me — the questions analysts need to answer for themselves to do their job well.

Synthesis

Common topics found in analyst reports
Analysis of existing analyst reports revealed recurring themes — the questions clients were most often asking, and the data analysts were most often presenting.

Visualization designs

Projected Balance as Revenue at Risk visualization
Projected Balance as Revenue at Risk — a forward-looking view showing where campaign spend is at risk of underdelivery.
Flight Overview visualization
Flight Overview — at-a-glance campaign pacing for generalist users.

Advanced views

Delivery over Time chart
Delivery over Time — tracks actual vs. expected delivery across the campaign flight.
Dual axes chart for expert analysts
Dual Axes — designed specifically for expert analysts who need to compare two related metrics simultaneously.

Evolution

Evolution of visualizations in Centro Platform
The evolution of analytics in the Centro platform — showing how visualizations developed from basic charts toward the advanced suite designed in this project.

Outcome

Research validated. Designs complete. Roadmap shifted.

2

Distinct user personas identified and validated through research

11

Visualization concepts designed and ready for development

✓

Simpler analytics did ship in the product before departure

The advanced visualization suite was fully designed and user-validated — but was deprioritised before development began, and I left the company before it could ship. Some simpler analytics did make it into the product. The work still stands as a complete, research-led body of design work. The process was sound; the constraint was organisational.

Reflection

The process is the story

Not everything ships. This project is an honest example of what good UX work looks like when it's done right — rigorous discovery, clear synthesis, validated designs — even when the outcome is out of your hands. The research uncovered a real and actionable distinction between user types that would have meaningfully shaped the product had the work continued.

If I were to revisit this today, I'd use AI to dramatically accelerate the synthesis phase — analysing report patterns and surfacing themes across a larger sample much faster than manual review allowed.