Transcendia are dedicated to helping seekers, corporate leaders and executives discover their true nature and transcend their limits to achieve personal growth, enhanced focus, and a thriving tribal culture within their organisations.
My role:
UX Researcher
Transcendia was at the early stages of actively marketing their services and in terms of working clients, had only undertaken an intimate soft-launch of their corporate retreats and personal development services with their close friends and business connections. They engaged my team for the following to ensure they were primed and ready for an official ‘go-live’:
Conduct market research on our proposed customer persona
Refining and optimising messaging & communications
Conducting a full website audit to ensure content, language & design is resonant with target market
Mapping out the customer journey to inform go-to-market and customer acquisition strategy
The brief seemed simple enough, as is often the case, but unboxing the website’s contents and speaking with users uncovered an exciting and challenging range of problems to solve for.
The Problem:
Transcendia faces a significant challenge in understanding their current target market (C-suite executives, HR managers, and People & Culture leads) and how their existing branding and voice can better engage with their customers.
Research Overview
Competitor Analysis
Out of an extensive list of potential competitors, we chose the 4 most similar competitors to understand the problem space and note their target audience, services and website UX. The goal was to find similar traits, observe strengths and weaknesses and understand Transcendia’s position in market.
4x Competitors Examined
Heuristic Evaluation
Utilised Heuristic Evaluation (top 10 UX principles for interaction design) to identify underlying issues within the existing website. We then graded them to visualise what issues needed to be addressed, allowing us to compare to existing competitor websites and make appropriate adjustments based on established usability principles and guidelines.
10x Elements Inspected
1:1 Interviews
Conducted User Interviews with HR/P&C managers and C-suite within Tech and other industries. The aim was to gain a universal understanding of their needs, wants, painpoints and personal experiences in the productivity/mental wellbeing space of their respective organisations, as well as capture their feedback on Transcendia’s existing platform and services.
8x Interviews Undertaken
Competitor Analysis
Undertaking competitor analysis was essential as one of our key objectives was to undertake market research and make recommendations for their go-to-market strategy
Excerpt of key observations & recommendations:
Types of programs: Online and In-person workshops
Benefit: The competitors diverse program offerings cater to varying customer preferences and lifestyle. Some customers prefer the flexibility of online programs, while others value the interactive nature of in-person sessions. By understanding this Transcendia can tailor its offerings to a wider audience. The flexibility to offer both online and in-person programs reflects competitors’ ability to adapt to changing customer preferences and market demands.
Quality: Success story
Benefit: By showcasing real-life examples of clients who benefited from their programs, they build trust among potential customers . Transcendia can learn from this approach to establish its credibility, Assuring clients of the quality of its programs through compelling success stories.
Customisation: Facilitators and mentors selected on the needs of your team.
Benefit: This personalised matching process guarantees that clients receive guidance and support from professionals who understand their industry, challenges, and objectives. Transcendia can adopt a similar approach to offer specialised and relevant expertise to its clients.
Heuristic Evaluation
Next we undertook a Heuristic Evaluation
We undertook this as it’s a low-cost, quick and effective research tool to get a lay of the land and create a base understanding of what we, as a design team, are working with.
This was a really valuable exercise, pertaining to the client’s outcome surrounding a complete website audit, and the research showed the site could be improved in the following areas:
Inconsistency surrounding branding and imagery
Difficulty in reading sub sections due to text color and background images
Unclear destination paths- ie, it’s difficult to navigate to find out more info
Information architecture needs adjustment to match real world conventions
1:1 Interviews
I undertook 1:1 interviews with c-suite executives, people and culture/HR managers and other senior managers. Given the time-poor nature of many c-suite execs, the Transcendia stakeholders and I agreed to open up the interview pool to include other managerial decision makers.
We chose to undertake 1:1 interviews and defined the purpose of the interviews to answer 3 points:
Validate if there is a need for Transcendia’s services
Understand the target audience and what their actual needs are
What factors will influence their GTM Strategy
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Intro:
What is your role?
How many people / teams do you lead/ are in the organisation?
What industry do you work in?
What is the remit of your role- what do you look after?
Culture & HR Overview
How would you describe the company culture within your organisation?
If positive- what approaches have you undertaken to foster this?
If negative- what influences do you think have led to this?
What are your organisation’s priorities in terms of staff development?
What strategies or initiatives do you believe could strengthen the relationship between employees and the leadership team
Have you and your staff attended workshops/events that provide informative insights into company culture?
If so, how was it? Was the information received positively/negatively?
Why?
What format where these programs delivered in?
Decision Making:
Who are the decision makers when it comes to team culture and employee wellbeing?
How does this process work internally?
Is there anyone else you need to influence to engage with team building/wellbeing service providers?
Do you also take into consideration the opinions of your staff?
What can team building/wellbeing service providers do to make this process easier for you?
Products and Services:
Focus
Where does focus and distraction play a role in the overall performance of your business?
What challenges do you currently face in this regard?, if any
If positive - what approaches have you undertaken to foster this?
If negative - what influences do you think have led to this?
What strategies have you invested in to improve staff focus and decrease distractions?
Have you and your staff attended workshops/events that provide informative insights into improved focus?
If so, how was it? Was the information received positively/negatively?
What format where these programs delivered in?
Mental Health & Well-being:
Can you share specific challenges your organisation faces in terms of workplace culture and mental well-being? (for example, does staff mental wellbeing effect productivity?)
Optional for C-suite & Execs: Has there been any burn out and severe stress identified in leadership roles and do you have any coping mechanisms to deal with this?
Does your company currently have any programs/services to foster positive mental health/well-being?
If yes, what are these?
Have you and your staff attended workshops/events that provide informative insights into mental health/well-being?
If so, how was it? Was the information received positively/negatively?
What format where these programs delivered in?
Would you look to external providers for these services?
What key outcomes are you aiming for when engaging with such services (or internal programs).
Service ROI & Business Outcomes
How would you measure success of a program?
What ROI would you expect from engaging in such services with an external supplier?
What are the biggest cultural factors that affect revenue and productivity?
What are you looking for from a service provider:
Are there any seasonal events/factors (e.g. ‘End of Financial’ year Or ‘Quarterly All Hands’ meetings) that impact WHEN you work with team building/wellbeing service providers?
What trust building factors influence you when deciding on a team building/wellbeing service providers?
What dissuades you from a team building/wellbeing service provider?
How would you go about finding a team building/wellbeing service provider? What channels?
What types of formats or delivery methods do you prefer for workshops or retreats (e.g., in-person, virtual, hybrid)?
Website (Bring up Transcendia website/share website link/share screen with website)
(Home Page) What is your first impression of the organisation from viewing the website.
How is the layout of the website? Were you able to find the information you needed easily?
Did you find anything confusing? What?
(Services- Focus, Tribe or Growth) In reading the language on the page, do you find the message and services of Transcendia to be clear?
If not- WHY?
Is there anything missing that you would like to see more of?
Soundbites:
We have an intelligent and peculiar team, so the provider’s solutions need to match that. Nothing can be off-the shelf.
Placement of images, slanting text doesn’t scream quality
Maintaining positive mental health is a key challenge for the business, affecting productivity
I like to use my network to understand who’s a good provider at the moment- social confidence
Be transparent with costs- even ballpark figures. It would make decision making so much easier as there’s so many providers
Measuring ROI:
Event Attendance
Engagement with the content
Unsolicited feedback
I can see how the informality of the website would dissuade people in my field
Easy navigate site - but not clear what they’re selling
Synthesis
Through Affinity Mapping, we grouped our interview results to identify commonalities and tackle the user pain points and opportunities from a design perspective.
The key groupings were pain points, service opportunities, what’s working, decision making, ROI and business outcomes, service opportunities and website feedback.
Opportunities
Mental Health & Well being:
Acknowledgement of importance of support systems that offer coping mechanisms eg. wellbeing committees, mindfulness programs, on demand psychologists assistance.
Focus & Distraction:
75% of respondents said this was an area important to the organisation
Trust:
Testimonials from similar sized organizations. Tailored approach to meet organizational need.
Transcendia Website:
Improve website’s readability. Provide clear messaging, services catalogue and point of contact.
Pain Points
Culture:
Employees are under pressure to perform well and are company culture is risk averse.
Mental Health & Well being:
High pressure work environment results in stress and burnout. Employees are hesitant to report excessive stress levels as their growth would be hampered.
Focus & Distraction:
No standard measure of causes or direct relationship with focus/distraction.
Trust:
Reluctance to engaging with third party organizations without complete trust and proof of ROI.
Transcendia Website:
Confusion about Transcendia’s services. Unclear language and value proposition.
Detailed User Understanding
Transcendia asked of us to map out the customer journey to inform go-to-market strategies. For this, we needed to have a deep understanding of the different users who engage with Transcendia’s services, and so, we created detailed personas to inform this.
The different personas taught us about specific objectives that Transcendia’s users were looking to accomplish, allowing us to have a much more focused approach when redesigns of the website took place, ensuring the needs of all were included. It was also important for the client, as they largely saw their user base as being c-suite execs, whereas in reality, those working in HR and P&C were the decision makers for engaging with services like Transcedia’s.
Customer Journey Map
Key takeaways from mapping the customer journey:
Decision makers are unlikely to partner with a supplier without social proof
The existing website is ambiguous and not concise in Transcendia’s offerings, turning window shoppers away
Great opportunities lay in simple design uplifts to existing website
Handing Over
As we had another small team dedicated to the design of the new website and user journey, we conducted a handover to ensure they understood the end-to-end research journey, results and implications. After the initial briefing, the research team consulted with the design team ongoing to validate their design decisions as the moved through ideation, low fidelity and high fidelity prototypes.
The Design
HOMESCREEN:
BEFORE
HOMESCREEN:
AFTER
The Learnings
One of the key challenges for this project was to capture the right candidates for the research, and given the seniority of the required users and the time frame of the project, it was especially challenging to engage an adequate amount of users for research. In the future, I would begin the resourcing of research candidates earlier and leverage personal networks when required.
Having distinct research vs design teams was beneficial to get the most out of a small amount of time, ensuring researchers could wholeheartedly focus on their elements before handing over to the design team. This also had challenges in meeting important deadlines and milestones to ensure the timely handover of research and insights so that the design team could begin ideation- a well organised research plan, execution and handover was essential to the project’s success.
Lastly, the project was a refreshing reminder about suspending my own bias, as having come from a team development/university background, I had formulated my own hypothesis around what users would require. I am always pleasantly surprised when my bias is challenged and unique insights and user feedback is uncovered.