case study
Marketing Strategy
and Website Design
project:
Ubiqum Code Academy
Website Redesign
2018
PROJECT SUMMARY
MY ROLE
Ubiqum Code Academy is a leading international coding bootcamp based in Barcelona, Spain. As part of their expansion strategy into new cities, they wanted to optimize their digital marketing strategy to improve the quality of their sales leads and differentiate themselves from the growing competition in their markets.
The team consisted of Head of Product Development, Chief Marketing Officer, Marketing Manager, 3rd party visual design and development vendor. Throughout the project, I took on various roles to address project needs leveraging my diverse skill set in product management, user experience, and project management.
ADDRESSING CHALLENGES
Limited budget and resources
Aggressive timeline
Remote Core Team
Agile Meets Waterfall
Competitive Landscape
Coached the core team on user-centered design methods, creating wireframes, and suggested software that offered high value and low-cost solutions.
Adhered to agile project management principals by establishing strong team collaboration on; goals, estimating tasks, adapting to change, and focusing on delivery of MVP.
Conducted an on-site workshop to establish project goals, process, and team rapport. Held daily video stand-ups and brainstorming sessions.
Most team members were unfamiliar with Agile and user-centered design principles but were eager to learn. The vendor was strickly waterfall so I adapted the process to account for it.
Leveraged target audience research to develop user personas and journey maps to identify key market differentiators. This led to the creation of user stories that were validated through customer interviews and usability testing of early design concepts.
DESIGN PROCESS
I brainstormed with the Head of Product on how I could provide the most value to his team and the project. Due to budget constraints, my contract was capped at 100 hours so we took the approach of "teaching the team to fish" so I could rapidly spin up the project, instill a process, train key agile and design skills and build a sprint plan from MVP to Release 2 so that the team would be self-sufficient as I transitioned off the project.
Research &
Design Sprint
Ideate &
Sketch
Wireframe &
Prototype
User Test
Groom & Prioritize
Backlog
Iterate
RESEARCH & DESIGN SPRINT
HEURISTIC REVIEW
We all completed a heuristic evaluation of the site to assess the site's usability based on 20 usability guidelines to rate, score, and help identify areas of focus. It was adapted from the work of Dr. David Travis, a User Experience Strategist from userfocus.co.uk. This exercise established a foundation and framework for usability best practices in preparation for the week-long on-site Design Sprint at their Barcelona office.
DESIGN SPRINT
Conducting the Design Sprint at Ubiqum's Barcelona campus allowed me to observe classes and interact with students and faculty. The campus was located in a building which also had a floor with a shared workspace with many target customers. This provided us ready access to conduct interviews, validate user stories, and test sketched solutions.
* Travis, D. (2016, April 12). 247 Web Usability Guidelines. Retrieved from userfocus.co.uk
PERSONA DEVELOPMENT
We considered market analysis, customer profiles, and website metrics compiled by the Ubiqum team to produce four user personas that reflected their target audience. I led them through rounding out the personas by identifying:
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Personal Background (i.e. Name, Age, Gender, Education, etc.)
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Personal Quote
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Motivations/Goal
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Challenge
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPS
With the personas developed I then proceeded to have the team use the personas to develop journey maps for each type of lead:
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Cold Leads - At the very start of their exploration
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Warm Leads - Curious and beginning to show interest
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Qualified Leads - Knowledgable and ready to select
The journey maps revealed many opportunities to convert visitors into qualified leads and identified inefficiencies in the sales process.
DEFINING PROBLEMS & CHOOSING A FOCUS
I assigned a persona to each team member and had them walk through the current site with the customer journey maps we created. This exercise revealed problems with their site they hadn't noticed before.
Each problem was noted on a post-it note which we then sorted into groups on an affinity map. I gave each team member several green dot stickers to vote on which problems to focus on and decided on focusing on addressing the four customer segments:
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"Job Changer" Career Seeker
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"Techie" Passionate about building cool stuff
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"Academic" Intellectually rigorous real-world employment
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"Business Person" Career advancement
SKETCHING & WIREFRAMING
We commenced iterative sketching, resulting in a homepage strategy showcasing four calls to action to each of our persona's. The goal was to have the visitor self-select the message that most resonated with them which led them to tailored content for that persona. We then developed a low-fidelity prototype of the homepage and a "persona" subpage containing the narrative geared to Peter, our job changing persona addressing the questions and aspirations of someone looking to "take a leap" into a new career.
User test of initial homepage design
Revised design
USER TESTING
We conducted user tests with three students who had recently enrolled and two testers from the shared workspace who met our "Peter" persona criteria. The tests validated our persona-centric approach but revealed an unintentional bias with the design. When the homepage layout of the four personas was presented as a slider, the respondents all clicked on the first selection. Upon further research, we found that this was a common usability finding with sliders and not unique to our respondents. We retested the homepage with the four personas visible at-a-glance and achieved the desired result.
CREATIVE BRIEF
The 3rd Party vendor joined the project at the start of our second sprint. We compiled a creative brief to onboard the vendor, update the CEO, and other key stakeholders.
Sprint Start
Wireframes
Copydeck
Visual Design
End Sprint / Start Next Sprint
Revise Design
Build HTML
End Sprint / Start Next Sprint
UAT
Revise Build
Grooming and Prioritize Backlog
Initially, I created an Agile sprint plan that prioritized the user stories into three categories with the goal of delivering launch-ready code early and often;
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Transform / Innovate (e.g. brand differentiation)
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Run (standard content and tasks, e.g. Contact Us, etc.)
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Grow (market expansion)
The vendor was eager to learn and adopt Agile but at the first sprint retrospective, the team agreed that the vendor's process and resources were presenting too great a risk to the project. The compromise was to design a sprint plan with wireframes, requirements, and visual designs delivered at the end of each sprint for user testing while code development adhered to the vendor's waterfall approach with milestone deliverables for user acceptance testing.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
As the project progressed, I kept the team on track by holding daily stand-ups, facilitated follow-ups to resolve spikes, and managed the requirements backlog. I produced and maintained a Risk Management Matrix to monitor risk severity, mitigation, and remedies.
I developed the sprint plan so that I could establish the new design approach, process, and documentation, while gradually transitioning responsibilities to each of the team members I had trained. My final deliverable was a sprint plan and backlog for the next two releases and revised Risk Management Matrix with mitigation plans.
TAKE-AWAYS
I am a huge advocate of iterative development and cross-functional collaboration because it allows me to tap into the strengths everyone brings to the table. This project proved to me that it is extremely scalable to small teams as long as you remember that the process should adapt to enable the team to launch the final product.