Seeda Web Design

Timeframe

February - April, 2021

Team

Tina, Jasmine, Sohelia and myself

Project type

+ Industry Project
+ User research
+ Ux/Ui Design

Project scope

The scope of the project was to use interaction design methods (personas, scenarios, participatory workshops and prototyping) to perform a design intervention for a small company, while being inclusive of stakeholders in the design process.

This three month user-research project was completed for engineering company Seeda, and ended in a complete redesign of Seeda’s existing website. Its intent is to build clarity in Seeda’s communication through transparency and visuals.
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Summary video of the final design intervention (a website redesign) narrated from the customer's perspective

My role

My main role for this project was project manager and lead copywriter. I lead the team when conducting stakeholder interviews and played an integral role in the creation of Seeda's brand messaging, as well as any other copywriting during the entire project.

Initial research

We started off the project by gathering as much information about Seeda as possible, in order to gain a deep understanding about Seeda's goals, their customers, and their competitors. This phase of the project was confusing, but necessary in order to clearly understand the problem space that we would be designing within.

Background on Seeda

Seeda Incorporated specializes in the implementation and production of environmentally friendly engineering projects that are cost-efficient. Their strategies are interwoven with sustainability and seek to maximize profit and positive impacts on communities and their environment.

Initial insights

The initial research process involved examining Seeda’s website, holding weekly meetings with Seeda’s CEO and sending out user surveys to other people in the engineering field. From this research, three key insights were uncovered:

  1. Customers need to have a clear understanding of Seeda’s main services and the value of their solutions.
  2. Sustainability is an area where Seeda excels compared to competitors.
  3. Most customers come from word of mouth while website traffic is few and far between.
Seeda's orginal website as seen in January, 2021

Design methods

After examining the initial research, it became clear that we needed to first have a better understanding of customer-client interactions before moving forwards. This was accomplished by creating user personas to understand who was involved during the interaction, and journey maps to understand how and why customers chose to interact with Seeda in specific ways.
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These design methods provided a starting point for the team to understand the specifics of customer interactions with Seeda and were iterated on throughout the entire project whenever new insights were discovered.

Defining personas

While examining early research and insights, it became necessary to identify who the design solution was intended for. These two demographics were: a project manager client and Seeda themselves.

Project manager client

Nicole is a junior project manager leading a construction project who needs to find a qualified contracting company. Due to time constraints, her goal is to find a contractor with specific skills as quickly as possible. She becomes frustrated when she has to do extensive research surrounding her potential contractors’ expertise and skills.

Seeda

Seeda needs branding that reflects their sustainability values and is consistent throughout their website. It should be simple and understandable so that it can be implemented by Seeda employees.

User journeys

Journey maps provided assistance to uncover the processes that Seeda's clients might take when considering Seeda as a viable contracting company for their project. I contributed by planning and conducting two 30 minute with head engineers to better understand this process. I also created reference documents for the team (such as the image below) by articulating the customer's thought process and emotions into an understandable journey map.

Project manager journey map

Framing the problem space

Before moving forward to establish and frame the problem, we realized that we did not have have a clear understanding of Seeda’s core capabilities, especially as a team of non-engineers. We decided to conduct more in-depth stakeholder interviews, and after these interviews we were able to accurately identify a design opportunity for Seeda.

Conducting stakeholder interviews

I conducted a few interviews with engineers, who gave us a new perspective about the process of how a project manager would begin to work with a contracting company. I also conducted another interview with Seeda’s senior stakeholders to come to a final understanding of Seeda’s desire to be a part of substantial, sustainable projects from larger clients.

The opportunity

Seeda is exceptional at creating sustainable engineering solutions, but their current website does not strongly convey Seeda’s values of innovation and sustainability.

    Designing for the opportunity

    After identifying the opportunity, we moved towards ideating on a design solution. We started with multiple solutions, but ultimately landed on a branded styleguide and redesigned website. The most important thing here was to make sure that this design solution accurately addressed our identified opportunity, and was rooted in evidence from our early user research and documents.

    Branded styleguide

    The branded style guide acts as a key document that helps Seeda to communicate a consistent message to their audience. Before developing the styleguide, a mood board was created to emulate important qualities that were necessary to incorporate into Seedas brand. Important keywords include: "making a difference", "sustainable", "innovative", "systemic," and "transparency."

    Branded styleguide and moodboard

    Redesigned website

    As the next component of the design solution, the team created a condensed, branded website to replace Seeda’s old website (which had a confusing information architecture). The new website imposes a clear hierarchy of information throughout the entire site and reinforces Seeda’s main values with branding and organized content.

    Visit Seeda's website or watch website video.

    Sitemap to impose structure and organization that I organized
    Wireframes forming the structure of the new website

    Benefits

    In the end I was responsible for presenting this design intervention to Seeda's stakeholders in a clear and convincing manner, in order to illustrate the expected benefits of the intervention.

    Styleguide benefits

    The styleguide provides an easy reference point for Seeda's employees to create consistent sustainability-focused content - a key component that was previously missing in branding. The guideline can assist Seeda to communicate to clients through copywriting and visual branding.

    Website benefits

    The re-designed website displays Seeda's main values in a way that is more transparent; this allows potential clients to quickly grasp of what Seeda has offer. The simplified and improved navigation makes it easy to move between pages, with multiple entry points to request a proposal.

    Home and About page of Seeda's redesigned website

    Reflection

    This project taught me how to work and communicate in a meaningful way with a company who did not understand design. I now understand how design and communication go hand in hand, and I understand that taking extra time to do user research will allow your design to communicate with more clarity.

    I would like to keeping working on communicating with stakeholders, particularly those who do not understand design. I would also work on structuring more specific interview questions in order to receive the information I’m looking for more quickly.

    Thanks for reading!

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    Copyright 2022 Michelle Illing.  Made with music_note in Vancouver, British Columbia.