Building the brand

Over three workshops, we worked with the client to understand the nuances of the project and create a unique, poignant and enduring brand.

The vibe

Getting to know the brand personality. Is it more traditional or progressive, serious or playful, familiar or disruptive? What symbols and colors does it conjure? How do these resonate with target audiences?

The voice

How do we want our community to describe us? How do they feel after interacting with us? What is our impact? What makes us different?

The journey

First drafts and first impressions. What direction do we want to take? What details do we want to tweak? What stakeholders should weigh in? Then iterate, iterate, iterate until it crystallizes.

Creating a user persona

Over a series of fun and productive meetings with the client we created a user persona that best reflected the community leaders they’d already engaged with through their grant program. We needed to build a website that resonated with these commuity leaders and provided an easy-to-use portal for submitting applications, invoices, and periodic reports.

“Community Leader Claire” came to life over two workshops with staff who knew this commnunity best. Thanks to this process, we discovered Claire’s goals, motivations, frustrations, and daily routine. We also got to know her demographics, family make-up and device preferences.

“OMG, they’re just like Claire!”

Several months after the website went live, a staff person told us that she had this realization at a meeting with program partners. Engagment with the site and newsletter supported this realization.

Mapping the user journey.

From awareness to action

When we were building the website, we wanted to know how Claire – our user persona – would engage with the site and ultimately what would drive her to a conversion or action point. We worked with the client to map out Claire’s journey from awarness to action trying to understand Claire’s emotions and pain points during each touchpoint of her user experience. Solutions to Claire’s pain points informed the formatting, language, and design of the website, in short, what the user’s digital journey with the client might look like for each desired outcome.