The Scope
Roles:
- UX Research
- UX Design
- Prototyping
- Usability Testing
Tools:
- Figma
- Miro
- Maze
- Google Surveys
Team and Timeframe:
A three week, quasi-design sprint. While this was a solo project, I received support from my cohort-mates at Thinkful and my mentor, Tom Green
The Client
Impulse Squared is a new marketing and content creation company primarily based in Australia. They aim to provide marketing to small businesses and support other artists and content creators. I’ve known one of their founders, Phill, for about seven years; and met Jake when I started working with the company. I’ve been working with them for the last four months on shaping the company and their subsequent branding:
The Challenge
With their direction and mission statement decided, Impulse Squared needs a website to attract new clients. This site will act as a portfolio of previous work, a list of their services, and a snapshot of the company’s atmosphere.
With this in mind, they asked me to create a responsive website that met the following goals:
- It will enable clients to review the services Impulse Squared provides,
- It will allow clients to view a portfolio of past works,
- It will communicate the Impulse Squared brand with a pleasing and easy-to-use interface, and
- It will convey the attitude and atmosphere at Impulse Squared.
The Audience
A small business itself, Impulse Squared wants to target the following people as their first clients:
- Small business owners.
- Aged 25 - 45 (the Millennials and the late Generation X-ers).
- Low- to mid-income.
These are people who don’t have the time or resources to run their marketing or might be looking for an upgrade. They’re frequent social media users — frequenting sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — and are generally pretty time-poor. In addition, this group of potential clients exists somewhere between the Early Adopters and the Late Majority in terms of technology adoption.
The Result
After three weeks, I was able to create a low-fidelity prototype of a responsive website. This site advertises Impulse Squared’s services, informs potential clients about the company, and showcases the artists they support. It’s effortless to navigate, with multiple avenues for contacting the company, and the content is clear and pretty comprehensive.
DISCOVERY
Proto-Personas | Competitive Analysis
BEFORE WE CONTINUE:
The term “small business” is a loose one, to be sure. It can vary depending on the country, industry, annual earnings, and the number of employees. For this project, a small business enterprise (or SEO) is defined as a company that employs less than 20 people*.
*Based on the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman data.
The Research
To kickstart the Discovery phase, I started with web searches. I gathered statistical data from the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman and found several articles about Australian SBEs.
In addition, I worked with the client to transform their preexisting customer profiles into proto-personas.
After all of this, I organized an interview with a former marketing professional — she helped me understand the motivations behind choosing one marketing firm over another.
Finally, I completed an in-depth competitive analysis of nine different marketing firm websites.
The Observations
Let’s take a look at five key findings:
Small businesses make up a considerable amount of the economy in Australia.
Based on the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman data, small businesses make up around 97.4% of all small businesses in Australia — meaning the target market is rich with potential users.
About half of SBEs have a web presence on the web and social media.
Given that most SBE owners in Australia are over 45, this solidifies that the target audience will be younger and smaller. Add to that Impulse Squared’s services are mainly related to digital marketing, this is vital information to keep in mind.
Clear communication is crucial to attracting SBEs.
Based on my expert interview, having good communication through calling, emailing, in-person meetings, and other methods is a critical factor in attracting and keeping the business of a small business owner. This information isn’t surprising, given the number of SBEs also considered “family enterprises.”
Potential clients are most interested in seeing success metrics.
Metrics such as engagements, number of clicks, and time spent on pages are vital to display — they show a company knows what it’s doing! Websites should also contain positive reviews and concise information about services.
Company identity is imperative to stand out amongst the sea of marketing websites.
Many marketing sites focus on their company identity. Beyond the use of color and typography, they try to give their clients a close look at who they are. It’s the best way to immediately stand out, especially with many marketing websites in existence.
DEFINE
Personas | Experience Maps
With all of this data in mind, I built two personas to help guide my decision-making.
Using these personas, I began to look at the experiences, pain points, influences, and feelings these hypothetical users might encounter when finding and exploring a marketing website.
After a few more conversations with the client, we narrowed down what exactly needs to appear in this low-fidelity prototype.
DEVELOPMENT
How Might We’s | User Flows | Sitemap | Sketches | Wireframes | Prototype, v1
Concurrent with my research, I (along with my cohort-mates) began to ask many hypothetical questions about the site, or “how might we” questions. I used these instead of user stories to shape the direction of the website. From those questions, I selected the three that most closely aligned with Impulse Squared’s business goals.
After selecting those top three, I created user flows that addressed them.
Finally, I used the paths I charted in the user flows to create a complete sitemap for the finished site.
With the information architecture in place, I started working on the shape of the website.
I started with some sketching and the creation of a small paper prototype.
I then moved on to wireframes — as you can see, the site is starting to take shape!
From these wireframes, I began to develop the version 1 prototype. It was with this prototype that I conducted my user testing.
Keeping Accessibility in Mind
While this is a low-fidelity prototype, there are still a few things that can be done at this stage to ensure the website is accessible for all:
- Minimum font size: 18 (desktop) and 16 (mobile).
- Minimum line spacing: Font * 1.5
- Minimum paragraph spacing: Font * 2
- Larger groupings of text are left-aligned.
- Call-to-action buttons have a minimum font size of 24pt.
The Testing
I ran 18 user tests, three of which I proctored personally, and fifteen through the Maze user testing site. For my proctored test, I created a small screening survey to ensure I tested with members of the target audience.
After three scenarios with five tasks, I had a wealth of information regarding the website’s usability.
The Good
Most of the testers reacted positively to the usability of the site, as can be seen with their favorable scores:
Overall usability rating: 4.3 /5
Participant satisfaction: 4.25 / 5
Some of the most common comments in the exit interview lauded the simplicity of the site’s interface, the intuitive navigation, and the ease of use. However, taking a deeper look into the testing on Maze revealed there were some usability issues.
The Bad
Parts of the original design were misleading — many users confused the images on the home page with links, and elements that were links were often overlooked.
Some of the main problems identified by the testing:
- Images on the home page need to be transformed into links.
- The “Meet the Team” bio links need to be more accessible.
- The path to the artist portfolios needs to be simplified, where possible.
- The phrasing for the list of services may need to be adjusted.
DELIVERY
Prototype, v3 | Mockups
After examining the data from the usability testing and the client’s concerns, I built one last working prototype.
The Outcome
The final low-fi prototype addresses the client’s concerns, plus those discovered in user testing. While the appointment function was removed per client request, the prototype still fulfills the company’s original business goals.
The Future
Impulse Squared is still in need of a website, but this was a great start. As the project progresses from here, there are several things I’ve recommended they consider. Many of these suggestions add some unique features to help the company stand out and incorporate the team’s love of content creation and gaming:
- Adding their casual “Meet the Team” videos would be a fun way to personalize their team members.
- Creating small animations for loading would add visual interest.
- The addition of gamification elements — such as soft sounds when hovering over or clicking on links — would add to the site’s uniqueness and hint at the company’s ultimate goal of entering the gaming industry.
A Few Final Thoughts
I learned a lot during this project, and I plan to take what I’ve learned and use it to develop this site and future projects further.
- I ended up talking to the client every day, which was great. However, most of our conversations comprised my showing them the deliverables and asking for their opinions. Had I tried to ask more probing questions, issues with the appointment system may have come to light sooner.
- When it came to research, I encountered a few issues. First, due to the difficulty of finding small business owners with my limited resources and the condensed timeframe, I felt that I could not conduct a quantitative survey at the start. Looking back, I had the time, and those insights would have been helpful during the process. Later, during my usability testing, it became clear that the way I phrased the tasks led to errors. I’ll need to be more concise with my wording in the future.
- Lastly, during the design process, I started by designing the desktop prototype — against the traditional “mobile-first” design practices. Because of this, I encountered issues both in the wireframing and prototyping process, as I found it difficult to translate my larger layouts to a smaller format.
Thank you for reading!
Feel free to check out my other case studies: