Service and project type

User experience, experience design | Digital Experience

Problem

The brief was to reimagine The Cardano online experience by merging websites for Lincoln Pensions (pension advisory services), Cardano UK (fiduciary management), and Cardano NL (risk management).

Solution

Cardano didn’t have any formalised customer insights, and we had limitations of budgets, so we needed a streamlined customer experience strategy to create valuable and meaningful customer insights.

• Interview customers: We interviewed customers and staff across the Lincoln, UK, and NL organisations to draw out insights and profile the different audiences.
• Create personas: Due to the limitations of budgets and time constraints, we focused on the highest value information to help us create user requirements and simple experience maps; we identified goals, needs, and touchpoints across the stages of the buyer journey.

This streamlined customer experience strategy gave us simple personas and customer experience maps that provided the core information needed to steer the design of the website and inform usability testing later in the project.

Design a new structure: The new structure allowed different areas of the business to maintain their autonomy while presenting a unified experience, in line with website accessibility standards.

We created a flat website structure that is logical, simple, and focused on allowing users to find the information that is relevant to them quickly and easily.

The structure allowed Cardano to reflect their separate areas of business under a single unified brand, complying with website accessibility standards.

Wireframes and prototypes: We designed a flexible library of page templates and modules that provided building blocks for the initial launch and for future developments and improvements. Prototypes were used to bring the more complicated elements of the interface to life, and we provided detailed graphic design deliverables and annotations to the development team to ensure a quick and subjective-free development process.

Usability testing: Using wireframe prototypes, the designs were tested with users to validate IA, navigation, and page hierarchy, ensuring a responsive website.

The result

• We met multiple stakeholder needs through iterative design reviews
• Followed a human-centered design process with real customer input
• Designed a site structure for easy goal and task completion
• Created a versatile library of templates and modules for web development
• Ensured compliance with website accessibility standards
• Provided detailed annotations for a seamless design-to-development transition
• Resulted in a responsive, accessible website