---
title: "Nanigans case study — Kwirita"
description: "Ad Engine’s move from a managed service to software advertisers ran themselves. Redesign for that change: self-service onboarding and a customer success site."
url: "https://kwirita.com/work/nanigans/"
---

# Nanigans

Ad Engine’s move from a managed service to software advertisers ran themselves. Redesign for that change: self-service onboarding and a customer success site.

Plate IV. *Current*.

- **Years**: 2013–2015
- **Role**: Product designer
- **Setup**: Boston company; I worked from Singapore
- **Scope**: Interface redesign, self-service onboarding, customer success site
- **Platform**: Web

## The company

Nanigans was a Boston ad-tech company, founded in 2010, whose Ad Engine software bought and optimized Facebook ads for large performance advertisers. Facebook named it a Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer in September 2012.

From 2013 the company began moving customers from a managed service to software they ran themselves, and in May 2014 it made the change formal: Ad Engine would be sold as subscription software to in-house marketing teams, and new managed-service work would stop.

## The work

When Nanigans acquired Lumatic in October 2013, I joined Nanigans and kept working from Singapore. The move to self-service changed who the product was for: in-house marketing teams now ran the software themselves, so the product had to do the explaining.

I led the redesign of Ad Engine for that change, with most of my attention on a new self-service onboarding module and an updated visual design. I also led the design and implementation of a new customer success site with the product, marketing, and support teams.

## What carried over

Self-service is a design problem before it is a pricing decision. Every step a person used to explain on a call now has to explain itself on the screen. Onboarding is where that gets tested.

## Sources

- [Business Wire, September 20, 2012](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120920006439/en/Facebook-Names-Nanigans-Strategic-Preferred-Marketing-Developer%E2%80%99)
- [TechCrunch, March 25, 2015](https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/25/nanigans-series-b/)
- [AdExchanger, March 2015](https://www.adexchanger.com/mobile/nanigans-doubles-down-on-self-serve-with-24m-series-b-cash-infusion/)

[Next: Lumatic](https://kwirita.com/work/lumatic/index.md) · [All work](https://kwirita.com/work/index.md)

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---

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