Consulting Firm Responsive Concept

Roles: User Experience, Visual Design, Prototyping

Shift7 Digital (formerly Siteworx)

The design team at Shift7 Digital (formerly Siteworx) collaborated on a detailed pitch for a large-scale website redesign project with a major consulting firm. The team took a deep dive into what the current experience was and how a redesign of the web experience could enhance the company's digital presence, while also keeping user experience as a central driving force. In the end, the pitch consisted of multiple homepage and menu navigation options across all breakpoints, as well as a clickable iPad prototype of the article experience. 

Landing Page and Menu Concepts

Multiple designers on the team created design directions for the pitch. Each direction has it's own way to combat one of the existing site's issues–too much content on the landing page. The strategy I took was to simplify the landing page to three basic pieces.

1. Defining the company mission and who they are.

2. Include an innovative, yet easy-to-use navigation that provides a pathway for all major user personas.

3. Highlight the most essential and freshest news from company on the homepage ("less is more")

After hours of hunting down inspiration for a very simplistic landing page and a few more hours dedicated to sketching, I started playing with an "app-like" homepage with everything visible in the browser without scrolling.

My concept also departed from the current site by introducing blue as a new, dominant color. Traditionally, the existing site only incorporate black, white, and red. Article imagery is kept in the black and white style in accordance with the firm's traditional design style. The colorful blue landing page brings a fresh look and feel to the web experience.

The left side menu bar on desktop and tablet experiences provides a jumping off point for content from the consulting firm's industries, as well as the main access point for the overall site menu. A single, featured article is promoted in the bottom right hand corner, instead of providing way too much content too early (like on the existing home page). Lastly, the main messaging focuses on the company, who they are, and specific calls to actions to learn more.

The menu experience for my concept is a full page takeover, presenting clear sections of the site for all types of user journeys. And because this concept was going for an innovative, app-like experience, micro-animations would be key in the build out. I played around with how the various user interface elements would load in and out on the mobile view by creating animations in Principle.

iPad Prototype Focus

In addition to presenting various color composite concepts for homepage designs to the prospective client, the pitch team wanted to go in armed with a prototype that narrowed in on a particular experience. To bring to life part of my concept, we built out a clickable iPad prototype of the article reading experience to be presented in real iPads at the meeting.

My concept includes an article sidebar that lists the content for a particular section of the site on the left, so that a user reading an article can quickly jump to other related content. In addition, I explored interesting layouts for an author bio page, allowing the user to learn more about the consultants from the company and why their perspectives are relevant to their consulting work.