My role
UX Design Lead, UX/UI designer, Researcher
Summary
Creation of a video presentation that showcase the functionality of the website, its interfaces, social media and newsletter, and other services with the purpose to increase traffic, provide a small tour to the brand and attract potential partners.
Give a check to Matrix4design
The company
Matrix4Design, was born in 2016 by the combination of innovation and quality to inform the world about design & architecture from Italy and other countries. Matrix4Desing is a digital magazine dedicated for professionals and fans for the interior, furniture, architecture design and noter innovations.
problem statement
Matrix4Design famous on constantly being part of different design conventions and events for them to remain updated and target for potential partners. The main problem was on showcasing their website and products. With no modern visual alternatives to catch the eye of people in order to learn more about the magazine and how to grow within.
solution
As the solution this project was born. They found the need of a visual media on which would help display in a brief way wat matrix was about. An image means more than one thousands words, how about a two minutes video? This video would be an important milestone for them that would bring as eye catcher for its viewers and would be vocally assisted by its representatives. This was clearly a solution that would boost the increase of new partners, help some of their readers understand their services, and bring some traffic from new users.
Core target needs
I want to be informed
This is a quiet aggressive target and they want to be well informed, Nothing can be hidden from them otherwise you can risk to lose a possible partner or target that would never return. Being clear clear is a big need requesting from these users.
Earn my trust
Either if they are article readers or design groups/companies, if they wish to join as partners there will be the need to earn their trust. Considering the Italian market of how difficult they are to accept technology or the idea of electronic services, a well visual and informative video would help as a catch for them to find out more and reach to a level of trust to partner.
BUSINESS GOAL
The main goal from this video presentation is to be a catch or a hook from bystanders or bypassers on conventions, but also to be informative and as a quick help introduction from the electronic magazine. The purpose behind is for an increase of traffic on their website and partners that would request from extra marketing services.
Project Goal
1 Increase visualization
2 Connect business for new partners
3 Provide information for new users
4 Showcase services
Research methods
1 Marketing Understanding
2 Competitor Research
3 Storyboarding
Market understanding
(For reasons of company content privacy, detailed company market aspects will NOT be displayed nor named)
Before starting brainstorming anything related on how to represent this non verbal video I went straight to the Marketing manager and the market team to get a closer grasp of how the business worked and the representation of the product.
I organized meetings with the Marketing team for collecting important data and certain information that could help me achieve this projects goals and how to make this presentation as informative as possible.
The product
Not only I had to talk with the market team to understand their strategies and services, but also I went to take a good look on their main product which was their online magazine. I dedicated a good decent time for me to get familiar with the product, and learn certain users flows on how to obtain information and read articles.
Their product was not only limited on their website but also on their social media. I went on each of their social medias for me to understand their distribution of the information. There were as well newsletters as part of their services to keep readers updated.
Competitor research
(For reasons of company content privacy, Competitors names will NOT be displayed nor named)
Once I got a nice grasp on their market method and the product I went to seek for their competitors. They kindly provided me with a list of their competitors and websites.
I started comparing the competitors with matrix4design and looking for as many positive aspects to recall and show. Not only this research helped me gather positive and negative aspects but also it help me for a way on how to portrait something that would be unique and different from their competitors.
STORYBOARDING
Once I finished understanding the market, its product and the competitors. I gathered all my data, as well all the requirements to be show on this non verbal video and I started creating a storyboard.
I had to constantly keep in mind that this would be a short video that could work as a visual representation from someone to present, but it had to be informative, catchy, and target friendly to be understandable.
I worked on several propositions and I narrated them with the marketing team leader and product manager to get the right story that would please the business, fulfill their goal, reach the project's goals and most importantly satisfy the target.
Website compositions
Once The storyboard was accepted I started on recreating the website on a simple flow that would showcase the homepage, how to access to an articles section, and accessing to one article.
These comps were firstly made on AdobeXD to be set as a prototype to be tested first that it would be fitting for its flow. Once the prototype seemed well, these comps were later imported on Illustrator to to keep the layers separate to be later animated on AfterEffects.
Social media comps
The next step was on creating a flow as if a user was scrolling or navigating the social media of Matrix4Design. The compositions were replicated first on AdobeXD, tested for its flow, later imported on Illustrator to separate its layers and lastly was animated in AfterEffects.
Newsletter redesign
While on this project I was as well tasked on redesigning the layout of their newsletters. I designed for a new template that would be more properly fitting with the style of the website.
These on the lefts were the first templates for newsletters that I designed for Matrix4Design. Representing a users flow of opening one of these newsletters I replicated a popular email system providers with its interfaces.
Animation & Motion design
I designed these icons in other to bring more motion and effect in between transitions. Each icon was vector base created from the scratch and later animated on AfterEffects.
FINAL PRODUCT
Before reaching to the result video found below, It went thru several video tests, from the Product manager and marketing team leader. Several problems were found and some minor changes were done. This final result which is the representation of a brand, and its users flows was not able to be obtained without the research, study and collaboration from the other teams.
The following video is the final product from this project that I directed, which I am grateful to said that brought big changes and impact to the company and its members.
Key learnings & problems
Learnings
This project served me as a good reminder of how important is to understand the product and the market strategy behind it, before starting any storyboarding process. Research is always key and a good connection with the rest of the team is essential.
Another key learning to point out is the organization, from the team as well information. As info architect this is something that helped me see that thru all project, a well organization of content and information is important on a way that would be easy to transmit for others to accept and understand.
Problems
One of the biggest challenges I had was mostly the acceptance of the other teams in order for me to do these researches. Italy as being a country that is behind technology and studies, for them it was not fully clear the reason behind my studies, nor the big importance for me to understand well the market and its product.
Another problem was the lack of time. This was a project on which I had one labor week for its completion. I have to admit the project was rushed, forced and low budget with high requirements on which it was all fully done by one person in just 5 days. Lucky I arranged myself very well and managed to push the rest of the marketing team in order for me to acquire the info needed to reach the final result.