Role: UX design lead
Timeline: June 2019 - December 2019
The challenge here was to build the first major milestone toward JUCY's overarching goal: move from disconnected products to a unified tourism experience.
The first step in that direction was to build a single digital entry channel that could in the future accommodate for all JUCY products and services instead of having a different entry point for each product.
To add to this challenge we had to take into account a critical point: the poor SEO performance of the website that drove most traffic and revenue (JUCY rental website).
It became clear that the goal to build a new rental website, with the ability to scale and host other JUCY products, with a main focus on SEO to drive more traffic (this was the number one KPI). That would allow users not only find JUCY more easily on search engines but also to promote other JUCY products. This cross-selling part was more of a long term/secondary objective.
As the initial statement was to drastically improve the SEO, and not having the expertise in-house, we had to get help from a third party agency, specialising in SEO and SEO oriented user experience. Since we were going to build a new front-end from scratch, the entire website could be restructured around SEO and UX recommendations to get the maximum benefits.
designer, making sure we would make the most out of the recommendations but also keeping a great user experience, in line with the business vision and branding.
After high fidelity wireframes comes... The much talked about "everyone has an opinion" user interface design! The bold green and purple needed to be added to these wireframes to make it look like a "real" website (yeah, that's still how some people perceive a UI/UX job in 2020, a color picker).
The problem was that every stakeholders agreed that we should rework and modernise the branding a little as there was no digital brand guidelines and nobody liked the old website look and feel, the green being too overwhelming. It was not representative of where JUCY needed to go, from a user interface perspective.
Brand and marketing were then ready to request another third party company to work on modernising key brand elements to look after the UI of the future website. Without the realisation that Kevin had broad palette of skills. Knowing that we had limited time and budget, it would have been a waste of money and time considering the outcome we were
trying to achieve. I had the necessary skills to do it internally with the right people involved, so I convinced the wider team that we could use my UI skills to design the new website and collaborate on refreshing the brand guidelines so we would end up with something appropriate for digital. It didn't need to be complex.
The main outcomes from a digital guideline standpoint was a total switch in color usage, going from 60% green and 30% purple to a much clearer 70% white whilst keeping the green as an accent and make the purple the main call to action color.
That's the very beginning of your design system when you have clearly defined usage and start using it consistently, even though only a few concept designs (used in parallel with old work I did to convince the brand team) had really been done as this point.
The other visual tool used to help achieving JUCY's vision was to incorporate more visuals. Visuals that make you dream. Dream of an adventure.
The other visual tool used to help achieving JUCY's vision was to incorporate more visuals. Visuals that make you dream. Dream of an adventure.
Once we all agreed on a visual direction and having clear simple guidelines in place came the time to design the interface of the whole website.
Again, limited in time and resources, I decided to go straight to the point and use a now well known methodology: Brad Frost's atomic design. Design the fewer page templates that can accommodate for all wireframes. Each template would be constituted of blocks that can be easily reused across different pages. Each of those blocks being built with smaller UI
components. Those components being themselves built from the very basics: fonts, colors and shapes.
As the deadline was getting closer, a lot of work was still remaining. Having a pretty website is nice but having it populated with content is better. While the marketing team coordinated and managed getting all the SEO friendly content for all pages (and translation, as we support German language), someone had to populate this content into the content management system used to develop the website's front end.
Alongside the product owner, we made a mutual decision to step up to try and complete the project by its deadline. From scratch, we had to learn a completely new and unfamiliar tool and quickly became seen as experts of that specific tool. Two of us weren't enough, we proceeded to organise tutorial sessions to teach a few more people how to use this tool. Eventually, we got help and populated all the content required for launch!
The main goal of this project was to improve SEO. After the website was launched at the end of December we started seeing the first results a few weeks later. Far from being close to matching KPIs that were set at the beginning of the project (how the website ranks on some keywords), which is normal as SEO results take time to be effective. It is also the type of
things that never ends, constant attention is needed and bringing new content will help over time.
Besides KPIs, something that you cannot measure was a key success internally, and that was restoring the business trust towards our delivery team. This is huge, to sustain a good and healthy relationship with stakeholders for future projects.
Besides KPIs, something that you cannot measure was a key success internally, and that was restoring the business trust towards our delivery team. This is huge, to sustain a good and healthy relationship with stakeholders for future projects.
This big roller coaster of a project was the source of many learning opportunities.
In my past experiences, as I wasn't exposed so much to the wider business, it was hard to evaluate the success of a project past the quality of the design you have produced. Certainly, quality of design is crucial but as a company there is more to define the success of a project than just KPIs.
Learning how to team up, collaborate, break silos, manage stakeholders and work toward a common goal via good, open and transparent communication was the big take away. It seems obvious and a lot of people would say they work this way on paper, but in reality it's rarely the
case. It was a company struggle to have siloed teams and lack of collaboration before this project. We overcame that and really worked together which was a huge internal win.
The last point would be about not being afraid of going a step further than expected. Going hands on when needed, and beyond what people think you are supposed to do, step up your game, get accountable for what you are doing, take new responsibilities. In short, make the project become a reality, a success.
Even though it wasn't in scope, the idea behind starting this UI library was to build a base for a design system. Far from it at the beginning but a good starting point, making it easy and accessible for anyone to reuse components, ultimately making it more consistent and sustainable (by having one source of truth). Just grow as you go.
This case study is less oriented on design practices and more on the ability as a designer to coordinate, communicate and collaborate in order to achieve successful projects.
Success is beyond UX design
JUCY Group
Context
Mission and responsibilities
Case study: building a website aligned with your vision
Challenge
Goals
Way of working
Outcomes
Learnings
SEO or good UX
Any artist color picker in the room?
The bread and butter of UI designers: building and assembling blocks
When your design work is over: it's not.
Illustration of the Atomic design concept
The starting point of the UI library. Build as you go.
Old website. Dedicated to Rentals only.
New website launched December 2019.
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From a wide perspective, JUCY's mission is to give travelers the green light to have the time of their lives. This effectively translate from providing singular experiences to a unified end to end great journey.
Mine more specifically was to help rethink, build and improve products that align with the JUCY's global strategy (we'll come to that soon).
My role involved being responsible for user experiences delivered across digital channels, pitching design solutions to stakeholders (Product owners, chief digital officer, head of sales and marketing, group marketing manager, brand design lead... ) and assuring the right design methodology was used.
Internally too, some challenges were faced. I joined as part of the newly built Enablement team (digital delivery team). Every digital related request or project would be supported by the team. Before the emergence of that team the resources were more scattered across the business and delivery suffered from a lack of alignment and communication. This led to some failures and a lost of trust to the digital delivery services.
So, the most important internal goal from a long term perspective for our team was to regain trust from the business through successful deliveries and communication.
SPOILER ALERT: WE DID IT!
Mine more specifically was to help rethink, build and improve products that align with the JUCY's global strategy (we'll come to that soon).
My role involved being responsible for user experiences delivered across digital channels, pitching design solutions to stakeholders (Product owners, chief digital officer, head of sales and marketing, group marketing manager, brand design lead... ) and assuring the right design methodology was used.
Internally too, some challenges were faced. I joined as part of the newly built Enablement team (digital delivery team). Every digital related request or project would be supported by the team. Before the emergence of that team the resources were more scattered across the business and delivery suffered from a lack of alignment and communication. This led to some failures and a lost of trust to the digital delivery services.
So, the most important internal goal from a long term perspective for our team was to regain trust from the business through successful deliveries and communication.
SPOILER ALERT: WE DID IT!