Content Page Admin Console

Overview

MyDisneyToday thrives on business collaboration and content presented to employees across all regions. Content pages were similar to a WordPress CMS-like experience. I designed them specfically for our needs as a company and as brand managers. In the early months following launch, our product team took the lead building and updating content pages which pulled us away from our core responsibilities. These were tasks we always intended to empower our partners to manage themselves. Since the initial launch focused on delivering the MVP, the content page admin quickly followed. This is an overview of that console and how it supports self-service and scalability.

Without a Content Page Admin

The biggest setbacks faced without the page admin were:

Dependency on the product team (us) - The product team was managing business configurations and updates instead of focusing on their core work.
Lack of self-service tools for business users - Business teams couldn’t independently manage their content or settings, creating dependency on the product team.
Time diverted from product priorities - Supporting configuration needs pulled time and focus away from critical product development tasks.
Lack of empowerment for business partners - The needs of unique brands across Disney are rightfully high. But meeting all of the for everybody with just one small team was not productive and required a solution.
Little sense of ownership for businesses - Everything published on a content page was derived straight from the businesses themselves. It was important to make it feel that way and give each business ownership over their content.

Opportunities

Opportunities we could provide by releasing a fully-functional page admin were:

Reduce product team overhead - Shifting page ownership to business managers frees up the product team to focus on core innovation.
Accelerate content deployment - Insteading over going through a multi-level process to build and release page updates, businesses could edit and publish immediately if desired.
Empower business partners - Providing the right tools allows partners to manage their own content, increasing agility.
Introduce scalable self-service - A self-service model reduces operational friction and scales better with growing business needs.
Invest in purpose-built admin tools - Building dedicated tooling supports long-term efficiency and reduces reliance on workaround platforms.

Research & Discovery

Business Needs

Because MyDisneyToday delivers a tailored experience for employees across various businesses and regions, it was essential to provide our brands with the flexibility to curate their own content. This included the ability to customize pages they own to better serve the needs of their employees or internal promotions.

Previewability - The native console of page editing didn't offer an opportunity to view edits while admins worked. It wasn't until a page was published that an admin could even see what they had done. We needed a change to preview pages prior to publishing in this model.
Page drafts - Drafts could sit after save until businesses were ready to pubslih them. This way, they can confidently publish when they are truly ready.
On-page uploads - In the native console, image uploads happened in a completely different area of the system. In the new console, we needed to be able to upload and use images without leaving the editing page.
Bulk uploads - Instead of using the Media Library (another part of the front-end MDT admin), admins wanted to upload all their files while editing. Introducing a bulk upload feature would allow them to do this easily. Sometimes users pave their own path and, as designers, we need to accomodate them.
Targeting - Pages needed to be targeted not only so that businesses and regions could see them, but also departments, orgnizations, and job levels.
Compact editing - This console needed a complete sitemap refersh from the current native workflow. Instead of being segregated to multiple pages and sections, this new console required compact, single-page editing.

Current (Native) Workflow

The native sitemap was completely linear with no hierarchy. Every action was a new page and it felt very disconnected. Wayfinding was also a major issue with this structure.

Proposed Workflow

The proposed hierarchy was simple - all actions were on the same page and available through progressive reveal based on back-end logic. Accoerdion show/hide functionality and modals offered the opportunity to keepo everything in one place.

Creating the Experience

We have third-party developers as part of the MDT product team. I worked with them to transform the (absolutely awful) native ServiceNow experience into one that was usable and required very little training. These are the implementations designed and developed to invite business collaboration.

Building a Page

The first page you'd see entering the admin console is a list of business entity configurations. This name carried over from legacy development but refers to each targets business experience. For security, it's critical that businesses only work on configurations that they own - introducing permissions. Showing and hiding features depending on user levels allowed us to simplify the list view and get content managers where they needed to go as quickly as possible.

🎬 View Prototype

List View

The first page admins see entering when going to edit a page is a list of pages and their associated businesses. For security, it's critical that businesses only work on pages that they own so we introduced automatic filtering and permissions based on their assigned business. Showing and hiding features depending on user levels allowed us to simplify the list view and get content managers where they needed to go as quickly as possible.

🎬 Page List View