UX / UI

How do we get buy in from stakeholders?
Learn together, of course!

ARC Studio is a well known architectural firm based in Singapore who just won the prestigious President’s Design Award and is regularly featured on newspaper, magazine and newspaper. They aim to increase their web presence and online marketing productivity. Through the design process, they are able to discover, streamline and evolve the objectives to work for their business.

Project Diagnosis

The old website was a single page html with javascripts that did not have the capability to feature any of their projects. The look and feel was out dated and the clients wanted to explore the various options readily available to maximise their online presence, particularly in the aspects of online marketing, social media and SEO.

Research, interviews, focus groups discussions were the tools used in the discovery stage. Through these exercises and mini workshops, we began to define the users, the purpose and design objectives.

Data and Info Visualisation

Data and information visualisation are used to clarify and set goals. Through the visualisations, we were able to go in depth into a particular issue (i.e. brand, culture, ethos, etc) without getting lost or overwhelmed with the mass of information we were handling. The notes from these sessions will then be used to facilitate the creation of the user experience and final look and feel.

Defining and Profiling the Users

Through this process, we are able to see clearly what are the elements of design and usability that are most important to this project. I also presented to the team the current landscape that the users are experiencing. One of the major concerns was that architectural firm project showcase website tend to load very slowly as it stores large quantity of huge photos. This cause the navigation experience to be disrupted and also, users tend to get lost in the navigation as there is often many categories of projects featured, causing them to leave the experience with a negative emotion after viewing 2 or 3 projects.

Information Architecture

The gathering of information and categorising them was a long and laborious task. Proposals are created and new information were added to tag the projects so that it can be easily traced. Research, discussions, card sorting and interviews are used to find out what are the best way simplify this massive amount of information. Content were created for each project that is also used for SEO. The contents of these projects were carefully curated through keywords and general direction of the tone applied and the kind of information to be created to maintain consistency throughout all the projects.

Wireframe Design Exploration

Organic and structured wireframe designs were explored through sketches and visualisations. Many factors are considered in streamlining the designs. One of them was that the clients wanted their work to be the main feature. They wanted the project photos to be huge. User interface and experience were one of the main deciding factors in the direction of the wireframe designs. The other consideration was that through the projects they have done and submitted, they wanted to attract more township projects. Hence, it was important to them that the projects were featured to show this capability. These sketches helped in the process of determining the general direction.

User testings

Using lo-fi prototypes, the concepts are put to test. On some occasion, we have to go back to the drawing to refine and redesign the wireframes or rearrange and reorganize some information to ensure a smooth flow while navigating through the information.

Look and Feel

Design mock ups are also created at this stage for art direction of the look and feel. It is often coupled with prototyping to help with the final experience being created.