MiCasa

WEBSITE DESIGN

PRODUCT DESIGN

CouldLeap Technologies, LLC

Mi Casa

UX Research | UX Design | Visual Design | Implementation

UX Research | UX Design | Visual Design

Problem

Re-vamp the existing website and marketing artifacts to attract new customers and increase digital footprints on the company's profile (web & social media).

To address the problems faced by the tenants because of the manual and time-consuming nature of the tenant management practices in big residential societies.

Solution

Designed and developed a new, sophisticated and modern website that focuses on showcasing the company's capabilities, services, and achievements to convert new customers to be the clients of the company.

Designed a tenant management app which reduces the gap between the tenants and management offices by providing online supports to most of the tenants' daily problems regarding their rented apartment spaces. The features of the app include:

Duration

Aug 2018 - May 2018

Nov 2017 - Jan 2018
Aug 2018 - Jan 2019 (re-designed)

My Role

UI/ UX Designer

Sole designer doing UX Research & design, and visual design.

Tools Used

My Role

Adobe Xd, Trello and CMS WordPress

UX RESEARCH

Interviews

Affinity Mapping

Conducted organization research by approaching some of the employees of the team and asking them questions to understand their expectations from the website. The data received from the interviews helped me to frame a better problem statement to work on.

Being a tenant myself, I began exploratory research and jotted down all the primary issues that I face daily w.r.t. my rented house and further grouped the data into broader categories and designed interview questions around them.

INITIAL PROBLEM STATEMENT

STYLE

Design a website for the company.

Funnel - semi scructured

STYLE

Semi Structured

Funnel - semi scructured

DURATION

30 Minutes

15 Minutes

NUMBER

3 participants

5 participants

QUESTIONS

Who are the potential clientS?
What are their job roles?
What they usually check in the websites of the companies providing services in these domains?
What are the ex-factors of the company which can pull clients towards CloudLeap Technologies than approaching other companies?
Does the company needs help in the visual design space, like Icons, typography, color palettes, etc?

How long you have been staying in rented houses?
Tell me about your apartment/house leasing process?
Do you have to go through a background check before approval?
What factors do you consider while choosing a rental house?
Have you ever had any bad experiences with the owners?
Do the owners perform background verification before they lease their house?
How do you pay the rent for your house?
Do you face any problems staying in a rented house?
What kind of problems? Have you encountered any major issues/calamities during your stay?
If you have a guest coming to your place, how do you manage his/her visit?

How long you have been staying in rented houses?
Tell me about your apartment/house leasing process?
Do you have to go through a background check before approval?
What factors do you consider while choosing a rental house?
Have you ever had any bad experiences with the owners?
Do the owners perform background verification before they lease their house?
How do you pay the rent for your house?
Do you face any problems staying in a rented house?
What kind of problems? Have you encountered any major issues/calamities during your stay?
If you have a guest coming to your place, how do you manage his/her visit?

How long you have been staying in rented houses?
Tell me about your apartment/house leasing process?
Do you have to go through a background check before approval?
What factors do you consider while choosing a rental house?
Have you ever had any bad experiences with the owners?
Do the owners perform background verification before they lease their house?
How do you pay the rent for your house?
Do you face any problems staying in a rented house?
What kind of problems? Have you encountered any major issues/calamities during your stay?
If you have a guest coming to your place, how do you manage his/her visit?

FINDINGS

The works in a B2B format, supporting operations of federal, state and local government agencies by providing various services.
Some of the solutions provided by the company include Big data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Analytics, and Identity and Credential Access Management.
The potential clients (customers) of this company are the technology lead (and above) level officials from the government agencies.
The clients usually check for previous works of the company and also looks for previous collaborations with other agencies.
The company has proven expertise and certifications in Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
The current priority of the company is to revamp the company's website. The company can focus on visual design space parallelly or after the website is implemented.

Funnel - semi scructured

REFINED PROBLEM STATEMENT

Design a website (an MVP) for a service-based tech company to attract the top-level management of the government agencies and help the company to convert the visitors into the customers.

UX RESEARCH

Document Analysis

Journey Mapping

Conducted document analysis to understand different types of contracts the company has taken in the past. Also reviewed the company's Capability Statement, which is generally used for marketing and promotional purposes.

Interviews also helped in visualizing the series of steps taken by tenants in order to perform specific tasks and their emotions in every phase. Below is one such example.

FINDINGS

The company has worked with various government agencies like the US Department of Commerce – US Patent and Trademark Office, Department of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Health Administration/Veterans Benefits Administration (VHA/VBA), National Institutes of Health (NIH) which are very well known.
Came across a document called as a Capability Statement which is used as a marketing document by the company to showcase company service offerings, past performance, and capabilities.
Received more information about the company establishment and licenses which was a key to acquire more government projects.

Funnel - semi scructured

REFINED PROBLEM STATEMENT

Design a website (an MVP) for a service-based tech company to attract the top-level management of the government agencies by showcasing past performance, collaborations and company details and help the company to convert the visitors into the customers.

UX RESEARCH

UX DESIGN

Competitive Analysis

Ideation

Conducted competitive analysis of the websites providing similar services to the government agencies. Extracted aspirational ideas to showcase different pieces of information to attract potential customers.

Based on the opportunity areas, I started brainstorming solutions to the problems faced. Below are the ideas with respect to the problems faced by the tenants.

Golden Tech Systems

Prominently mentioned service offerings in various verticals.
Unique menu items in the primary navigation like Federal and Careers.

Creatrix

Black and Red theme (unprofessional colors).
Key points mentioned under each service, products, and Solution.
Various CTA buttons (to showcase offerings).

Cloud7Works

Focused more on showcasing the company's achievements (Awards & News).
Primary service offering prominently mentioned on the landing page. with a CTA.

NLM Group

Wordy website. No images, illustrations or icons.
Presence of contact form along with company address and phone number.
Provided a brief about services offered to famous clients.

FINDINGS

Call To Action button plays an important role to attract visitors to interact with the website.
Usage of Icons, illustrations, logos should be promoted to capture visual attention (recognize vs. recall).
Use of basic and professional colors to depict the professional identity of the company.

Funnel - semi scructured

REFINED PROBLEM STATEMENT

Design a website (an MVP) for a service-based tech company to attract the top-level management of the government agencies by showcasing past performance, collaborations and company details in a visually engaging and attractive layout, and help the company to convert the visitors into the customers.

UX STRATEGY

UX DESIGN

Strategizing Implementation

Low Fidelity Prototype

Strategized the design hand-off and implementation process. Extensively used Trello platform to communicate work progress and supervise implementation.

I created a Low fidelity paper prototype based on all the ideas captured during the ideation phase and tried to build a generic mobile app experience. I tested it with a couple of potential users and received their valuable feedback and suggestions.

IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY

Methodology
I examined various methodologies and chose Waterfall method to deliver the website because of the following reasons:

Since it was a portfolio website, it was important to consider all the identified factors (collaborations, services, past performance) while delivering the initial version.
The company didn't have an established brand identity or an Identity System for digital designs. This made rapid prototyping next to impossible. I realized an Agile model wouldn't fit this project.

Development
A developer was assigned to this project and after a couple of meeting with him, it was decided that website will be based on CMS WordPress platform where he would implement the designs and add the code snippets wherever required.

User Testing
Our identified users of this website were the top officials of the government agencies, but due to their tight schedules, it was difficult to schedule testing sessions with them. After communication with the CEO, it was decided that the low fidelity designs will be evaluated with the CEO himself (as he was the SME in this area). And the implemented designs will be tested with a real audience via Google Analytics.
The changes will be implemented in the next version of the website which would accommodate more details and established design Identity of the company.

Communication channel
The developer, CEO and I decided to have weekly conference calls to ensure the project was on track.
Introduced Trello webtool to proactively track and update the status of this project. Provided a small Knowledge transfer session to the onboard team on this tool.

UX DESIGN

Low Fidelity Prototype

Used various Ideation techniques and created low fidelity sketches for the website. Tested the prototype with the CEO and received his feedback.

I created a Low fidelity paper prototype based on all the ideas captured during the ideation phase and tried to build a generic mobile app experience. I tested it with a couple of potential users and received their valuable feedback and suggestions.

FINDINGS

Altered the designs to support a single page scrollable layout, in order to reduce the visual distraction to the visitor.
Added the "Get in Touch" button at the very beginning of the page to enable the user to quickly enquire about the services by directly writing an email.
Reduced the number of service offerings from six to three (as the rest of the three services didn't have enough information.
Skipped the plan of creating separate service pages and showed all the details on the single page, as mentioned by the CEO.
Changed the wordings of the Key Differentiators from generic sentences to service level sentences.
Brainstormed on the hierarchy of the content to be shown in a single page layout.

VISUAL DESIGN

High Fidelity Prototype

Designed a high fidelity prototype based on the feedback received from the CEO fo the company.

Screen designing was a difficult job at the beginning. Material Design system came to my rescue. The explicitly mentioned specs of each element gave me concrete guidelines to follow, and on the other hand, different case studies for inspiration catered to the creative need of the application.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

VISUAL DESIGN

Summary

Final Design

It was my first UX Designer experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The journey definitely didn't go as planned, but I was excited to face the challenges. I loved being a part of this company and its journey to establish its digital identity.

Introducing Mi Casa, a product carefully tailored product to cater to the daily needs of people living in a rented space, however small they might be. Mi Casa allows you to take orientations, make rent payments, raise maintenance requests and invite guests to your house from your fingertips thus saving a huge amount of time and money spent on these activities.

LEARNINGS

ORIENTATION

Be prepared to go above and beyond your assigned tasks. In start-ups, unanticipated challenges come every day and we should be prepared to deliver our best in every situation.
Got a chance to practically apply various research and design methods studied during the courses in the School. Understood how to conduct real-time trade-offs in the product based on the organizational priorities and technical constraints.
Learned to operate Google Analytics and understood various metrics to be considered while measuring project success i.e. (bounce rate, user flows, new Vs. returning customers and site engagement time).

Take online or in-person sessions.
Sessions scheduled as per tenant's convinience.
Short videos followed by easy questionnaires in an online session, to ensure tenants understand all the policies.

Take online or in-person sessions.
Sessions scheduled as per tenant's convinience.
Short videos followed by easy questionnaires in an online session, to ensure tenants understand all the policies.

Take online or in-person sessions.
Sessions scheduled as per tenant's convinience.
Short videos followed by easy questionnaires in an online session, to ensure tenants understand all the policies.

IF I HAD MORE TIME AND RESOURCES

HOME

I would have focused to design the company's identity before approaching website redesign.
I would have chosen a more flexible theme on WordPress to tackle the pixel level issues of the website.
I would have focused on creating more engaging visual design through custom made illustrations and icons.

Blogs section to socialize with other members of society.
Notifications section to receive important alerts form society.
Events section to publicize or book tickets of the events taking place in the society.

Blogs section to socialize with other members of society.
Notifications section to receive important alerts form society.
Events section to publicize or book tickets of the events taking place in the society.

Blogs section to socialize with other members of society.
Notifications section to receive important alerts form society.
Events section to publicize or book tickets of the events taking place in the society.

2020. Prasad Patil

✌

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