UX/UI Designer - Team Lead
June 3rd, 2022 - July 11th, 2022
Desktop
Karuka Cultural is a global executive leadership advisory firm that provides modern solutions to the modern challenges businesses encounter with their organizational culture. Together, they have over 80 years of united leadership advisory experience in corporate culture, change management, and leadership inclusion. Their ambassadors deliver insights, solutions for results, helping companies achieve organic cultures of trust and collaboration aligned with the company’s strategy.
Identify the largest opportunities for Karuka Analytical by redesigning the website navigation and landing pages to drive conversions of interest to clients.
Identify the largest opportunities for Karuka Analytical by redesigning the website navigation and landing pages to drive conversions of interest to clients.
Lack of branding. Karuka did not have a logo that would help users recognize and identify the company
Excessive amount of information presented in each page as well as lack of visuals. Pages are monotonous and users easily disengage.
Oddly placed navigation and lack of spacing can create issues with legibility. Users may have difficulty distinguishing each page name.
Unbalanced information. Some pages had excessive amounts of information and some pages barely had anything. “Our Why” did not add anything new or insightful for users.
Our team created a more visually appealing site with an easy to recognize navigation system along with a variety of interactions sprinkled throughout the site to engage users, particularly Gen Z users, who are known to have a much shorter attention span.
Our team created a more visually appealing site with an easy to recognize navigation system along with a variety of interactions sprinkled throughout the site to engage users, particularly Gen Z users, who are known to have a much shorter attention span.
The competitive analysis was done between three well-known consulting firms: Deloitte, Accenture, and Bain and Company. Using these companies, I noticed three strong characteristics:
Consulting companies span many industries, majority of which appear to be B2B whereas Karuka Cultural spans many industries as a B2G.
All competing companies have a more streamlined website with multi-layered informational architecture. Karuka attempts to add all of their information in a single page.
All competing companies utilize photos and graphics throughout their websites. UI is significantly more engaging and all three use a brighter white background compared to Karuka’s gray.
For the secondary research, I directed the team to focus on Gen Z, since this was a specific group of people the company wants to target for future endeavors. To better understand the generation coming into the workforce, we had to learn their tendencies, abilities, and characteristics. We learned that Generation Z are...
The most culturally diverse population to date has high standards for openness and inclusivity
Prefers effectiveness over efficiency to achieve tasks. If a task requires they use a document-based application, then they would utilize PCs or tablets.
Gen Z spends more time on media than any other generation, however, they don’t use it to socialize, rather, they use platforms to be entertained.
Gen Zers have a shorter attention span than their Millennial counterparts, so it’s vital to make an excellent first impression that will draw them in
They expect transparent, top-down communication from leaders that speaks to them as individuals, delivered directly to them on their mobile device…appreciates communication that feels real.
During the design phase, my team faced a variety of challenges. The first being a lack of coordination between the stakeholders. Unfortunately, because Karuka was undergoing a massive project to bring their analytical services to life, they simply weren’t on the same page. We had to redo our designs multiple times. On one end, several stakeholders wanted minimal information and focus on user engagement. On the other end, several stakeholders wanted to keep all of their content and add even more content to better inform their potential clientele.
I designed our initial sketches, taking a minimalistic approach to content and increasing user engagement. These sketches include a variety of images and interactions that help to entice users to interact with the content and help increase engagement.
After receiving approval from the owner of Karuka, my team proceeded to create wireframes. These wireframes essentially structured our content and as well as the components that we wanted to be interactive.
Due to the conflicting opinions of the stakeholders of Karuka, my team’s timeline was spent changing our design to meet the different wants and needs of the stakeholders. As a result, we did not have time to conduct official usability tests. However, we did do a quick test regarding the logo and company name and we tested the product amongst ourselves and the stakeholders.
Our wireframe design used the logo as the first letter of the company name. When we first came up with the idea, we knew there was a chance users may not read the company name as “Karuka Cultural”. One of my team members presented the logo and company name to a handful of people and had them read it. All five people read it as “Aruka Cultural”, revealing a major flaw in our design. These individuals could not identify the actual name of the company.
To correct this, we reverted the logo and company name back to what it was in the original sketches, the large logo spanning the length of the text made is significantly more legible.
Another large change took place before we proceeded to our high fidelity mockups - the “Our Team” page. The stakeholders had been debating the significance of this page for some time. Since the executives were subject to change, they decided to remove the “Our Team” page entirely and focus on the company’s industries and capabilities.
After some time and effort, the stakeholders finally agreed to our wireframe design. With this we started creating our high fidelity mockups. I created vector art using the company’s colors to emphasize Karuka’s offerings and visually modernize the front page. One-by-one we incorporated our color palettes, animations, and interactions.
Due to the uncertain nature of Karuka Culture during this development phase, my team’s deadline came to a grinding halt before we could do any degree of usability testing. Despite this, I believe I learned some very valuable lessons as a new UX/UI Designer.
Stakeholders will have varying opinions on how things should be done. A designer must be flexible and adjust to the changes, which may require redesigning something over and over again.
Team members will have differing skill levels. I have to assign tasks based on their strengths and help them improve on things they are weaker in.
The UX process is fluid and due to the unpredictable nature of stakeholders, designers may have to withold on certain processes in order to meet deadlines and time constraints.
Not everything that looks good will be beneficial to the user. If users cannot interpret a concept the way you wish them to interpret it, it is a bad design.
Staying positive and having fun helps immensely. Although I was stressed at some points when stakeholders could not agree on something, I still enjoyed the process and seeing our product come to life was fullfilling.
Overall, this was a great project that I am proud to have had the opportunity to work on. I enjoyed the company of my peers and looked forward to how the product would take shape as we help move Karuka Cultural forward in their modernization phase. Not only did I learn how to work with little direction, I also learned how to collaborate and build on the skills of my teammates.