The Brief

Redesign of a website aimed at creatives where they can promote their ideas/services/product(s).

Target audience: Creative people – people with ideas looking for funding and investors looking for those with ideas;
Measurable: Usability and understandability.

 

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Experience Mapping

Copy of FinalUserJourneyTemplate IS - New Page

The Outcome

  • Redesign of the website design and Information Architecture (IA) following relevant ISO guidelines, UX best practice, including Nielsen’s usability heuristics, interviewing people for usability/views/ideas as research, and A/B testing of designs
  • New Information Architecture (IA), including the removal of duplication in the menu
  • Removed the original small drop-down menu that had a huge number of subject categories, replacing it with a larger style surface area for the main menu to aid usability and ensured the menu avoided subject duplication. Used card sorting for user validation
  • Giving users feedback via the addition of the hover facility for the top menu bar
  • Ensuring consistency via replacing several colours with a single gold colour for the IdeaSquares
  • Added the square design feature to the main top menu in a colour different to those of the IdeaSquares on the page to make it easier for site users to find
  • Changed the Information Architecture, removing the icon squares ‘Recently viewed’, ‘Most Popular’, ‘Latest Squares’ to avoid duplication
  • Added a gold top to each Ideasquare to give balance
  • Hovering over any IdeaSquares/main menu to give users feedback (a box colour change from gold to one other colour e.g. purple)
  • Redesigned all 3 social media icons together with ‘blog’ with a link facility in a square directly under the top left home square to make it easier for site users to find
  • Redesigned the ‘login’ above the ’email/register/forget password’ so that these together formed a square in keeping with the square theme to make it easier for site users to find

The Challenge

  • To redesign the website design for usability alongside preconceptions
  • To accommodate quickly in the website design, the constantly changing form of this new start-up
  • A Responsive design, to take account of mobile and tablet usage

 

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Initial Sketches

Header and Footer Sketches

sketch1

 

sketch2

 

sketch4

 

sketch5

 

sketch6

 

Main Menu Sketches

sketch7

 

sketch8

 

sketch9

 

Outline of my work

I designed a new Information Architecture (IA) to:

  • Removed duplication of subject areas and to make it easier for site users to finding the relevant areas
  • Highlight the company vision/ethos of being aimed at creatives
  • Divided the Information Architecture (IA) into three areas, further to research: seeking creatives, seeking investment, seeking resources

 

Website design included:

  • Research involved heuristic evaluation, A/B testing and talking to/interviewing people (target group) to refine the original website, making it more usable, catering for the needs of the target group
  • Website page ‘mockups’ for the functional specifications

 

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New Main page
mainpage2

 

New Main page – mobile view

Social media icons

mobile2

 

Client’s Original Main page

original_ideasquares

 

 

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Client’s Original Menu
ideaSquaresmenu

 

New Menu: Seeking Creatives

seekingcreativesmenu2

 

 

New Menu: Seeking Investment

seekinginvestmentmenu2

 

 

New Menu: Seeking Resources

seekingresourcesmenu2