For the project of redesigning the corporate site, I chose to focus this snippet on the process of directing the design team through to the first iteration of design concepts.
Why Redesign the Corporate Site
All internal stakeholders were unhappy with the current designs of the corporate site and so I took the initiative to redesign the corporate site. To do this, I created a research task to first understand what problems we would need to solve and how we would measure the success of this redesign.
How to Approach the Redesign
The purpose of this research task was to provide a data-driven approach to the corporate site redesign by capturing The Orchard’s goals, identifying problems that could hinder them, and shaping a path forward.
Methodology
In pulling together the comprehensive report and new design concepts, I time boxed the team efforts into ~ 3 weeks. In these 3 weeks, the deliverables identified were:
- Survey (key stakeholders & Orchardists) with the Brand Personality exercise
- Heuristic evaluation
- Analytics assessment
- Persona development
- Content audits
- UX workshops
- Competitive analysis
Value of the Comprehensive Report
- Helps to inform the different decisions made in the different concepts produced
- Helps to shape & inform the conversation moving forward
- Serves as an informative resource for future projects
- Fostered close collaboration between 2 different teams doing the same work at The Orchard
Planning Sessions
We held brainstorming sessions as well as pulled together a story board for the final comprehensive report.
From these planning sessions, we walked away with multiple areas we still needed to understand better.
Gathering the Data
Given the value in this approach was that we were taking a “data-driven” approach, it was necessary to pull together the key data points which support the the findings we wanted highlight. To do this, I utilized our existing data from Google Analytics and added a new tool Hotjar to track and understand user behavior.
Brand Personality Exercise
To understand why we needed to redesign the site, we first needed to identify the different reasons stakeholders disliked the current site. To do this, we conducted a brand personality exercise where we asked our stakeholders where they viewed The Orchard brand as being now versus where they wanted the site to be after the redesign. We also identified different goals for the redesign and asked stakeholders to prioritize what we should be focusing on for this project.
Comprehensive Report
At the end of the research period, the team was able to complete comprehensive report outlining:
- Usage Behavior
- Problems
- Competitive Landscape
- Vision
Design Direction
Throughout the process, I had also worked with individual designers to conceptualize some of the information we were learning along the way. The purpose being, as mentioned earlier, that these would serve as discussion points during the presentation to help stakeholders understand their needs and wants while guiding conversation.
During the presentation of concepts, feedback was being collected so designers could understand why stakeholders liked or disliked designs. This information would also be used during the workshop on the following day.
Day 2: Corp Site Workshop
The feedback was then used the following day to help guide and understand user feedback. Interestingly, once discussion started around the concept which had been voted #1, it was soon learned that no one in the room could justify their selection. Upon probing, it was actually concept #3 stakeholders found to be more in line with where the organization is going.
In working through the feedback, we were able to prioritize the feedback in the room to understand how to prioritize the tasks for the next iteration of designs.
