Style Tile Example 1
Style Tile Example 2
EI Sturdza, a financial firm in Ireland, sought to redesign their website in 2014. They initially contracted with several different agencies, including Mediaman, to begin this redesign process, and I was brought on board to assist their UX and Project Management teams in creating the layouts for this site. These layouts would then, in turn, be handed over to a dev team for coding.
One of the enjoyable thing about working with various teams as a freelancer is seeing how each group handles a design/development project. Mediaman uses an experienced UX designer and several project managers to spearhead projects like the E.I. Sturdza redesign. In addition, their initial explorations are done in the form of Style Tiles, which are intended to give several brief design directions to guage client reactions and see what they prefer.
Style Tiles often consist of the same components, designed differently across each tile to give the client multiple options. An initial set of 3 tiles were delivered before proceeding to the second portion of the project.
Style Tile Example 1
Style Tile Example 2
After a Style Tile was chosen, we moved on to the design process. While working closely with Mediaman's UX designer, we both sat in on meetings with clients directly at Sturdza to discern their needs and desires for a new site. During this process, we discovered that Sturdza had a unique need: To highlight two separate but distinct assets of their business - Financial funds and financial managers.
Initially, we suggested the client consider de-emphasizing one of these business elements to not split the focus of users who arrive on the homepage. However, Sturdza felt that their unique business propositions (funds & managers) needed to be given equal weight.
Homepage with Dual Callouts
Layouts for subpages - including their filtered News section (shown here) were also posted for client review and subsequent revisions. The News section in particular needed a simple filter mechanism as well as layouts for four different post types - Article, Video, Interview and a vaguely defined "Other Category".
News Subpage
After several rounds of review & revisions, we began the wrap-up process and delivered finalized designs. The homepage had achieved E.I. Sturdza's goal of giving equal weight to their funds & managers; we also provided layouts that showcased their different region-based funds and pages that detailed the work experience of their knowledgeable Fund Managers. After delivering these finalized designs, the development team got to work and delivered a live version of the site that closely matches the designs I provided.
