Onespring Consulting
Homepage Redesign and Restructuring
The Story
OneSpring is a design consultancy that was founded in 2005 in Atlanta based on human-centered design approach of software applications which has propelled OneSpring to work with the largest companies in the world as well as government agencies.
The Problem
OneSpring wanted a homepage that demonstrated their unique engagement options for potential clients while also attracting young professionals to join the OneSpring team.
The Goals:
- attract more clients by improving messaging and description of the services
- attract young professionals who need to jumpstart their career or those who seek professional growth
My Role and Timeline
I was a lead UX Researcher on the team of four designers. During 2.5 weeks I was involved in every phase of the life cycle of the project. My main responsibilities included user and contextual interviews, ideation, designing, prototyping, usability testing and final iterations.
PHASE 1: Discover
During our first meeting with the OneSpring founders we established the key objectives that kept us focused when restructuring the home page. With the goals in mind, we took the mixed-method approach and conducted contextual inquiries, user interviews, a survey, and completed competitive and comparative analysis.
Contextual inquiries and user interviews where created to reveal the core needs and wants of two different user personas – potential clients and job seekers. The survey provided us with quantitive data that helped us prioritize information when designing the homepage sections that meant to attract new talent. We studies the features, content, and the service language on competitor homepages and reflected our findings in the competitive and comparative analysis.
PHASE 2: DEFINE
Research Key Takeaways:
- Potential clients were unsure about the services that OneSpring provided, mainly due to the confusing service language used
- Both user types desired to learn more about the team, not just the founders
- Company’s values and mission were ambiguous, and there was no information on the team culture and professional growth opportunities
- The logos of the big brands added credibility and talked about the scope of work that OneSpring can provide
Persona Creation
Our team developed two personas based on the research findings and the tasks put forward by OneSpring founders: the Client and the Potential Employee.
PHASE 3: DEsign
Armed with our research, we moved into ideating and sketching. Each of us sketched separately and then we came back together to discuss and share our design decisions. Our goal was to develop a wide variety of approaches and be exposed to multiple perspectives as a team.
After having agreed on the content hierarchy in our mid-fidelity version, our goal was to create at least one high-fidelity prototype that was consistent with the current site after touch-points with the founders. We ensured our first prototype combined existing content with the UI elements of the existing website. The other two prototypes were developed with more freedom when it came to user interface, especially the choice of colors.
Design Decisions
Engagement Options and Services: The founders of OneSpring aimed to showcase the company’s flexibility when it came to the services they offered. Besides, the research demonstrated that the users of the existing website were initially confused about what exactly OneSpring’s offerings were and struggled to find the info by clicking away from the homepage. This led us to designing a “How We Engage” section that highlighted the “engagement options”, at the same time improving the language in the description to bring more clarity.
Company Values, Culture, and Team: Job seekers pointed out the importance team and team culture, so we tried to weave elements of team culture throughout the homepage, such as photos of OneSpring’s existing employees to demonstrate collaborative culture, and a section for professional development. Exposure to the information about the company’s talent gives potential clients a good idea about the kind of individuals they could work with.
Learning about company’s values was important for both personas as they were seeking to understand how much they aligned with their own.
Testing
We conducted preference testing for each version of the home page by conducting 6 user interviews and 20 surveys. Users were asked to rate and comment on the content hierarchy and organization, colors, icons, photos, and interactions.
Preference Testing Takeaways
- Users preferred the content flow of version A
- 65% of users preferred the colors of version C
- 2/3 of users liked icons in version A
- 75% of users reported they felt versions B and C were lacking certain information
- 75% of users liked having an employee testimonial on the homepage
PHASE 4: DELIVER
In the 2.5 week sprint we were able to achieve our main goals and restructure/redesign the homepage for OneSpring. Our strong research translated into a quality final product that we presented to the CEO and CXO of the company. The new home page enabled a positive and informative user experience for both potential clients and employees, and our team was able to deliver in within a given deadline. In the future, if we were to work with OneSpring again, we’d continue to put our research findings to life by improving global navigation, and designing “OneSpring Team” page from scratch.
