OLIVER Agency is in its inaugural year in partnership with a New York-based Investment bank. I am brought in as a lead Product Designer to help launch the first several platforms.
My role
- I collaborate with the Creative Agency to meet client goals. This entails collaborating with internal reviewers, consulting stakeholders, and receiving client feedback
- As a freelance contractor, I also manage billing and timelines. Based on completed projects, I also help scope for future productions
Project milestones
- I helped lead the reconstruction program initiative, a custom program that used the full extent of the internal product
- Several other platforms were launched using the same approach
- Remapping the top navigation of a global product
Project Goals & Objectives
An internal platform, this unnamed platform due to compliance reasons, is essentially a news outlet to help inform internal employees of the investment bank. With the system built to use components, I am tasked to understand the abilities of the platform and tailor information for client scenarios.
Research & Discovery
As a web platform, we find the system is responsive and can maintain columns—a feature not available on other internal platforms. With this, we better understand how components can be arranged and formatted.
Information Architecture & Wireframe
Using the components available, I have further defined page levels within the product experience. By creating a hierarchy within a page and within a system, I can best guide visitors within a platform. Moreover, by providing outlets for interior pages and a menu of articles, we can better nest information and search for content.
Usability Testing
When testing the news page, we tested two scenarios. One provides several news pages for one microsite. The other provides only one news template. The difference is in the ability to sort. In this usability test, we presented both options and found one news template is all that is needed.
Visual Design
Finally, one important addition is the header banner. Meant to identify each microsite, often stage in production becomes very tedious. In my findings, I’ve found opportunities to group business units to have a similar function and therefore each banner uses a template which has gone through an extensive discovery. Above is a low-fi example of the banner which was provided. Several standards are called for: ADA compliance for reading the title, how to make impact in a campaign by using templates, reducing reading error by image format, and art direction embellishments.
