Result: cutting manual processing by 50%, and saving around 200 hours per month. It also improved conversion by 15%.
Overview
Apollo is a marketing platform designed to unify how VNG Games’ studios manage campaigns from planning to execution. Before Apollo, teams were working across fragmented tools and siloed data, making it harder to align strategy, capture opportunities, and measure ROI with confidence.
Apollo brings these workflows into a single system, giving teams the structure, visibility, and insights they need to run more effective marketing campaigns.
Problem
VNG Games’ studios were working with a marketing setup that was:
In total
Main Insight
Head of department:Needed clearer visibility into forecasting, campaign performance, and ROI to support faster decision-making.
Team member:Needed a simpler, more self-serve workflow for campaign setup, segmentation, testing, and optimisation.
Both:Needed a unified platform that reduced fragmentation and supported more confident, data-informed decisions.
User Interview
DEVELOP + DELIVER
Help senior stakeholders understand what matters quickly, without digging through operational detail.
Reduce cognitive load during task execution.
Before
Before the redesign, Apollo used a combined interface for both creators and admins. This meant users with very different goals had to navigate the same view, which made the experience more complex, less focused, and harder to use efficiently. We separated the experience into distinct creator and admin views so each user group could see the right level of information, actions, and workflow context for their role.
After
We introduced role-specific views that matched each user’s job more closely. Creators could focus on building and tracking campaigns, while admins could focus on approval, oversight, and status management. We start with user flow and then design for the 2 workflow.
The workflow maps how campaigns move from draft to approval, scheduling, activation, and completion, with clear paths for updates, rejection, recall, and stop actions. This improves status clarity and makes the process more reliable for both operators and approvers.
Status column: Uses clear visual labels to help users scan campaign progress and identify what needs attention.
Add new campaign: Highlights the primary entry point into campaign creation.
Pending Approval: Surfaces campaigns waiting for review.
Active: Highlights campaigns that are currently live.
All: Provides a complete view across every status.
Filter by status: Helps users quickly sort and manage campaigns by workflow stage.
Filter by status: Helps users quickly sort and manage campaigns by workflow stage.
View: To view the campaign overview, using for both admin view and creator view
Edit: To change the campaign overview, using for creator view
Pending Approval: Surfaces campaigns waiting for review.
Active: Highlights campaigns that are currently live.
All: Provides a complete view across every status.
User Feedback
The flow makes approval work visible and easy to scan, but it needs stronger prioritisation signals so senior stakeholders can quickly identify urgent or high-impact campaigns.
The flow feels clear and structured, but daily users need more obvious next actions and stronger feedback on what requires follow-up.
Team Feedback
The flow is easy to scan and helps me quickly see which campaigns are pending approval. However, I need clearer next actions from this view so I can manage follow-ups more efficiently.
Major design decision #2
We redesigned the segment creation flow to give users a clearer step-by-step process and the ability to generate audience data directly through configurable conditions. The goal was to reduce reliance on the data team, lower the risk of setup errors, and make segment creation faster and more reliable for marketing teams.
Before
Users feedback
There is no way to preview a segment during setup, which created uncertainty and increased reliance on the data team for validation.
Users feedback
The segment creation difficult because it was hard to understand whether the logic had been set up correctly.
After
We introduced in-flow segment preview, giving users immediate visibility into the output and reducing support time by around 2 hours a day.
Users feedback
The flow makes segment work visible and easy to scan, easier to understand and reduced the need to work with the data team for mock data.
The change from single select to multi-select in one of the fields. It gave them more flexibility when setting up segment conditions and made the workflow feel more practical for real campaign needs.
The results are split by User ID and Device ID, with a further breakdown across iOS and Android. This gives the marketing team clearer visibility into the target audience on each device type, making it easier to plan and tailor campaigns more effectively.
Major design decision #3
Research showed that the previous notification text was fixed and not customisable, limiting how well the message could be tailored to users. This indicates that the fixed, non-customisable notification copy may have reduced message relevance, leading many users to dismiss it rather than engage.
Title: Allows users to customise the notification headline, helping the message feel more relevant and attention-grabbing at first glance.
Image: Lets users add an optional image to enrich the notification visually and make the content more engaging.
Preview: Shows a real-time mobile preview across iOS and Android, helping users check how the notification will appear before launch.
Before
After
Preview NotificationVersion 1 (Before Apollo launch)
Preview NotificationVersion 2 (After Launch)
Diagnose
Result
My designs are being implemented by the Engineering Team and was launched in 2024. To evaluate the impact of the design, we measure:
Apollo reduced manual processing by 40%, saving approximately 200 hours per month. This shows the redesign lowered operational support burden and reduced the amount of manual intervention needed to keep campaigns moving.
After launch, Apollo increased conversion by 15% and reduced abandonment by 20%. These results suggest the simplified workflow and improved interaction patterns helped more users complete the journey successfully.
The redesigned campaign creation workflow reduced completion time from 3 days to under 2 hours. This was a strong signal that the new flow made the process faster, clearer, and easier to complete.
Content sharing increased by 40% versus the previous version, showing stronger user engagement with the updated workflow.
Client Feedback
Lead Design at VNG Corporation
“Tai is a thoughtful and highly capable UI/UX designer who brings a strong balance of product thinking, execution quality, and collaboration. He works especially well on complex systems, where clarity, structure, and user flow matter as much as visual design. What stands out in Tai’s work is his ability to turn messy requirements into experiences that feel intuitive, purposeful, and scalable.
He approaches design with both curiosity and discipline. He does not stop at surface-level UI improvements, but looks deeper into user needs, workflow friction, and business context before making decisions. He is also strong at translating insights into practical solutions, whether through journey mapping, interaction design, prototyping, or refining product flows with engineers and stakeholders.
Tai is collaborative, receptive to feedback, and committed to improving the quality of both the product and the design process. He communicates his rationale clearly, works well across functions, and shows real maturity in how he handles iteration and trade-offs. I see him as a designer with strong potential to continue growing into a highly impactful product designer.”
Reflection
This project strengthened my ability to design for complexity at the workflow level, not just the screen level. It taught me how to balance business rules, user needs, and system scalability, while using clearer structure and interaction design to reduce friction in high-frequency operational tasks.
In the past, I relied on my design lead or product manager to coordinate with developers. Because of that habit, I only consulted developers after designing the first feature for Apollo, which led to me redoing part of the user flows. Now, I involve developers early to confirm the design's feasibility and avoid rework.
Although I always strive for the best experience, I also learned that business goal often require compromises. In this project, I recognized the need for flexibility instead of getting stuck on perfecting every detail. I learn to identify design elements that can be simplified or postponed without sacrificing the core experience.
Reflection
If the platform continued to evolve, I would explore four opportunities to make campaign planning more intelligent, connected, and scalable.
Use AI to suggest audience segments, campaign content, and channel recommendations based on previous campaign performance. Marketers would remain in control, but the platform could reduce repetitive setup work and help them get started faster.
Introduce forecasting tools that estimate audience reach, engagement, and potential campaign outcomes before launch. This would help teams compare different scenarios and make more informed decisions earlier.
Expand Apollo beyond individual campaigns by allowing marketers to plan connected customer journeys across push notifications, email, in-app messages, and other channels from one place.
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