Coaching by JRL
Responsive Website for a Mental Health Professional
My role: Product Designer
The Mission:
Jasmine Lake is a talented therapist venturing into the interpersonal coaching industry. Jasmine needs to build a website to promote her new business venture. She plans on tailoring her business to help professional men in the tech field improve interpersonal relationships.
My job: Create branding that reflects Jasmine’s warm, playful personality as well as her professionalism, understanding and curiosity. The site should appeal to her preferred demographic and provide a clear narrative for the coaching process.
Design Process:
1
Discover
Methods:
Competitive Research, 1:1 Interviews, Secondary Research, Expert Interview
2
Identify
Methods:
Business Model Canvas, Personas, Card Sorting, Site Map, User Flow, Task Flow, Emotional Journey
3
Design
Methods:
Style Tile, Sketches, Wireframes, Mockups, UI Kit, Prototyping
4
Verify
Methods:
Remote User Testing, Affinity Map, Priority Revisions
1
Discover
In this beginning phase I seek information about the coaching industry and about coaching clientele.
My Research Goals
Learn about interpersonal coaching.
Identify key users and their pain points.
Understand the circumstances and motivations for information seeking.
What is the competition up to?
These competitors represent a sampling of some of the most successful life coaches, best coaching websites and highest-rated personal coaches. I also looked for some indirect competitors in consulting and design since the business goals are similar for these types of businesses.
Features Matrix
Comparing features and discussing the service design with the client helps me define the components necessary for the site.
What motivates the client?
To better understand seekers of coaching services, I performed 1:1 interviews with 6 people from personal contacts and from connections made through online coaching groups. Each interview was 30-45 minutes and consisted of a script of open-ended questions.
Key Insights
From the interviews, I was able to make an initial list of desired info:
Credentials and qualifications of the coach
Clear presentation of methodologies and defined steps.
Demonstration of learned skills
Testimonials and success stories
Clear pricing structures
and things to avoid:
Guarantees of any kind
”Woo” or magical claims, inflated claims/self promotion
Poor communication, not following up
“Free consultation” seems unprofessional to half of those interviewed, HOWEVER 4/6 think a consultation is necessary
2
Identify
Here I transform findings from the surveys, interviews and research into a roadmap.
Goals for this phase
Synthesize findings from Phase 1 to generate personas
Understand prime motivators and detractors for prospective clients
Identify key components, features and pitfalls
One isn’t always enough.
The surveys and 1:1 interviews suggest that clients seek coaches for a wide variety of reasons. To compensate for this, I created 4 different personas with differing motivations, personalities, interests and challenges. From here I can design with a broader spectrum of users in mind.
Saul may not be the typical client, however he could benefit from coaching. Including Saul as a potential user may help to shape demonstrations of value.
The description for Max came up frequently in interviews with the client.
Though Jasmine intends to work primarily with men, Nenette represents women in the tech field that could benefit from Jasmine;s services.
Eugene best represents the client that Jasmine is seeking to serve.
Divining the Path
With personas in hand, I further empathize with the users, understand decisions faced and optimize tasks.
With iterating on the user flow, I begin to see how I may guide a user, to tell a success story with the user at the center.
The path in coaching is not linear. Here I explore the emotional journey and expose opportunities to accommodate the user through design.
Simplicity in navigation means the user feels comfortable, guided and coached through the process.
With the site map in hand, I can begin more detailed ideation.
3
Design
With the parameters set, it is time to tell the story through color, line and symbolism.
Design Goals
Create branding for Coaching by JRL
Demonstrate the coaching process in a way that connects to the user
Create a high-fidelity responsive prototype.
Inspiration From a Name
For a business operated is solely by one person, I recognized that the brand message must accurately reflect the person as well as the business. Jasmine is the brand.
Feminine: I found the shape of the client’s namesake: the jasmine. A suiting and serendipitous symbol.
Logical: I used the golden spiral as a guide to alter the size of the petals
The icon: Leaning gently upward, playfully, harmoniously and slightly eccentrically, suggesting light-hearted and uplifting growth.
A Guiding Line
The client emphasized wanting the user to feel guided. The users in the interviews also expressed a desire to not feel lost.
In order to accomplish this through design, I employed a simple dotted line to guide the user down the page.
Shaping the Pages
Using the maps and flow charts from the previous phase, I sketched, refined and polished the pages of the MVP for the site.
I quickly sketched wireframes based on the maps and flows to ideate possible page layouts.
I refined the user interface with digital wireframes.
Here you can see that the dotted line is still in development.
I experimented with a few interfaces for booking.
Wordy or superlative descriptions may turn off some users, so I encouraged the client to be succinct in the messaging.
Telling the User’s Story
I met with the client several times, and I often mentioned telling a story to explain how the process worked. She loved the idea of creating a narrative. The idea of “leveling up” like in a role-playing game came up frequently in interviews. This coincided well with comments from several interview subjects mentioning journeys, rewards, skill building and paths. I took a page from Joseph Campbell and made use of adventure-themed imagery to explain the process.
The adventurer stands in as both the hero and the user.
Much of coaching is having a plan and seeing where one can go.
Building skills and approaching the target through practice.
The dragon represents unknown challenges.
Putting the pieces together
The client approved the final color choices, fonts and styles. Clean, bright, fun and feminine, but not off-putting to male clients.
Strong imagery and brand colors fill the home page.
The dotted line shines on the "How it works" page with a more geometric design. (Thanks for the suggestion, Igor!)
A simple interface is all that is needed for booking since there is only one product.
The coach's photo aligns with the adventure imagery.
4
Verify
The design looks bold, fun and inviting.
But is it effective?
Testing Goals:
Identify design improvement opportunities
Identify Information Architecture improvement opportunities
Identify opportunities for improving UX writing
Test Service Design assumptions
A 30 minute video chat
I opted for remote recorded video testing, as I would get more real-time feedback on design choices. I met with 6 subjects, a combination of personal contacts and online referrals.
I presented several scenarios to each subject and had them interact with the prototype in real time and noted comments, behaviors, successes, failures and surprises.
I wrote insights from each interview on sticky notes with a different color for each user and organized into quadrants: works, change, questions and ideas.
These insights shed light on improvements to be made prior to moving on to development. In the end, only a handful of revisions to the UI, graphical elements and writing were needed to move forward.
Trying On the Developer Hat
Unfortunately, the developer that was lined for this project was up was not available in the time that the client needed the site to go live. I happened to have a few days off, so I took a shot at it. Lucky for me, the site was not complicated or heavy on content and the assets were easy to implement.
The end product works well and the client is very happy.
“When I started working with Jason, I was so overwhelmed at the idea of making my website. I wanted my website to be unique and to reflect my personality while being functional. Jason walked me through the process one step at a time. First were my logo and color pallet. He put together unique options, and I chose from there. As we got further in the process, Jason helped me clarify exactly what I needed to say on my website and how to say it. He did this through a lot of interviews and research! My website works because he figured out what information my customers want and in what order they want to see it. Between the research and design, I feel very lucky to have Jason working in my corner. I know my website is unique and effective because of his skill and efforts. I will continue to work with Jason in the future as I trust he is the right person to help my brand, website, and business evolve with me.”
— Jasmine R. Lake
Conclusion:
I really enjoyed seeing the Coaching by JRL website come together, especially refining the graphical elements, interviewing subjects about coaching and having brainstorming sessions with the client. As a case study, this truly showed me how connected user research and design decisions should be and what kind of impact that can have on a user’s life.