Introduction
Around May 2022, I joined Sribu as the first UX designer in Solution Department. Our department is B2B digital funnel service, providing market research, web development, SEO & social media, and growing online sales client business.
Prior to joining the team, design work was outsourced to a freelancer on a project-by-project basis. However, the team did not establish a consistent design workflow because projects were completed as they were finished.
Problem
During my first couple of months, I observed that our team lacked a design framework, resulting in inconsistent designs and difficulty for the project manager, designer, and developers to collaborate effectively. This unexpected situation led to inefficiencies and suboptimal experiences.
To illustrate the problem, I created a design audit on a previous project to show the stakeholders the potential benefits of implementing a design framework
Text-heavy interface with a long sentence
The first issue with the workflow was that there was no standard for the headline duration. As such, it caused attention problems when users came to visit our websites even it was hard to read and understand the context
A screenshot of our previous project
Long duration for user to read the headline
I did an audit by using a reading time calculator to estimate the user’s reading time, with the following results:
What is an impact on user behavior?
- They quit website quickly
- The business did not interest them
- They ran out the motivation to finish the journey
Effective & Fast scanning
I did a comparison on how other companies do in their headline, in which it turned out to be more visual-appealing and effective, assisting the user to easily understand the business
Solution
After I define the problem, I began listing the three major steps thing that our team should do to improve collaboration and ensure consistency across the team, as follows:
Content first, design later
it’s important to plan all the content ahead before we start the design, so it will make the visual more cohesive and resonate between the two.
Create a creative brief
It is necessary to create a creative brief by setting rules, such as the number of words in every sentence. This rule should be fulfilled in developing a creative brief to provide the writer and designer with all the information they need to complete a project.
Workflow
I proposed a workflow that commenced with thorough research to identify the user and business needs, followed by wireframing and content outlining in order to establish the structure of the content design. This activity was then followed by the creation of high-fidelity design iterations which were thoroughly tested, before finally being handed off to developers for implementation.
This methodology was deemed suitable for our team’s current conditions, as it prioritized user-centricity and facilitated efficient collaboration.
Result
After successfully presenting the proposal to stakeholders and obtaining their approval, we initiated the workflow for website projects. This provided us with clearer direction particularly for developers and designers to have a more comprehensive understanding of projects.
As a result, there was a significant improvement in the quality of the design.
Conclusion
Being the first and only UX designer on the team was challenging, as I needed to consider many factors to understand the best approach for our team. At the same time, it was also an exciting journey because I got to create an internal framework for the organization.
