Overview
Context
Golden Folk Wellness is a holistic healthcare center located in the heart of Los Angeles. It's a community space that was created for people to rest and find healing. I'm working on a two-woman team alongside fellow designer Linda Roman on a mobile-first redesign of the GFW website.
Company
Golden Folk Wellness (freelance)
My Role
Discovery, User Research, Design, Development
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Miro, Trello, Google Workspace, Squaresapce
Timeline
July 2021 - Present
Problem Statement
Golden Folk Wellness is a small business that was created nearly 10 years ago as an inclusive space for people who wanted to find 1) effective healing outside of "traditional western" medicine, and 2) the support to get started on their wellness journey in a space that wouldn't judge them for seeking out alternative forms of medicine.
We observed that Golden Folk Wellness' current website design is outdated (hasn't been updated in nearly 10 years per the business owner), and lacks a clear and concise structure through which clients, can easily absorb information about Golden Folk Wellness's offerings, practitioners and philosophy. This causes confusion for patients, and a lack of trust in the information ultimately resulting in extra work for the business owner.
the Solution
We created an easy-to-navigate online space that is a reflection of Golden Folk Wellness' physical space by utilizing UX best practices. We prioritized a mobile-first restructure and visual upgrade of the Golden Folk Wellness website that simplifies the process of finding pertinent information for all patients and enables them to confidently and quickly book their own appointments. We did this not only through restructuring, but by adding imagery that not only helps patients to understand through visualization, but to prepare for healing mentally, by further reinforcing the idea of trustworthiness through brand and transparency.
Our Approach
Discover
Competitor Analysis
Heuristic Evaluation
Survey
User Interviews​
Define
Affinity Map
User Persona
Insights
User Flow
Site Map
Develop
Wireframes
A/B Testing
Style Tile
Deliver
Hi-fidelity prototype
DiscoveR
Competitor Analysis
In order to get a feel for the holistic healthcare industry's web presence on a greater scale, see what the standard holistic healthcare website looks like, and gauge where Golden Folk Wellness' website falls in the mix, I started by performing a competitor a
analysis. We performed a SWOT analysis of the Golden Folk Wellness Website, as well as three of it's direct competitors and one of it's indirect competitors (green).
Heuristic Evaluation & Red Lining
Once we had a feel for what the industry looked like, we moved on to evaluating the Golden Folk Wellness website itself and making notes about what we thought worked, didn't work and what improvements we could potentially make.
Survey says...
71.4% of users preferred to make appointments online via a booking website.
When given the choice between having more Images or Informative Text on a site, nearly 86% of users said they'd like to have a mix of both mediums.
Showcasing a variety of different content makes a site feel trustworthy, but a whopping 31.6% of people want to see reviews from other patients.
User Interview script
We used user interviews to gather qualitative data. Our goal was to interview 5 subjects, however due to time and budget restraints we were only able to complete a total of 3 interviews. Criteria for our interview candidates included individuals who either had previous experience with holistic medicine, or those with chronic pain who might be looking for alternative methods of treatment to western medicine.
Affinity Map
Define
USer Persona
Based on the qualitative and quantitative data we gathered as well as the research we did on services offered at Golden Folk Wellness, and an interview with the business owner, we came up with our user, Ashley.
User insights
Knowing Ashley's needs (pain management) and restrictions (time/knowledge) how might we improve the Golden Folk Wellness website in way that will increase her confidence in Golden Folk Wellness as a space to be trusted with her healing?
Feature prioritization
Using the cards from our affinity diagram, our feature prioritization matrices included impact and priority. The items we found to have the highest impact and the to be of the highest priority at this time were: Customer Reviews, Imagery, and Flow.
The first two features above we determined were fairly straightforward, but that to create a website that is "cohesive and flows well" there were two main factors we needed to look at. The first factor was strengthening the brand identity, which we addressed when we started building out the UI, and the second factor was the information architecture and guiding users to information through common sense site structures.
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Additionally, we had the opportunity to work closely with the business owner throughout the redesign process. She told us that the biggest issues she had with the website were that 1) it was outdated, and 2) instead of booking through the third party service she pays for to help her organize and book appointments, clients would contact her directly, overwhelming her with emails and phone calls.
user flow
Knowing the business owner's goal was to have more bookings through her website and fewer bookings directly through her, as well as knowing we could achieve this through a new site structure, I checked what the process was like to book an appointment on the website. This is what the flow looked like:
Locating the Book an Appointment button requires at least 2-3 clicks to find a page with one available--and that's assuming someone is already familiar with the website and knows what they're looking for.
Site Mapping
I also created a map of the existing site architecture, considered how we could create a more intuitive flow, and came up with a condensed version by eliminating potential redundancies. For example, the Pricing, Photos, Testimonials and Scheduling pages were all dissolved. I was able to remove those items from the navigation by incorporating them uniformly amongst the rest of the pages. I also added the Book an Appointment button to the navigation so that it could be accessed from any page at any time.
Design
Wireframes
A/B Testing
Because we had a lot of design inspiration, we decided to ask for feedback on some of our UI elements for our header, reviews and offerings carousel. Users let us know that the options on the left felt more sophisticated and trustworthy, and were a better reflection of the Golden Folk Wellness physical space.
Style Tile
One of the unique challenges of this redesign was dealing with a web builder. Financial limitations meant we wouldn't be able to use a developer to help create the site, and that meant we would also be dealing with a few technical limitations. Once we had a good sense of how the hosting site worked though, we were able to create a product that was very close to our original design idea. Having a working knowledge of CSS and HTML coding allowed us to fill in some of the gaps, but we did end up making minor adjustments to the design so they would fit within the constraints of the web builder.
This scope of this project unfortunately doesn't go further than making the site live due to financial limitations, but if we were required to measure the success of this redesign I would do so by looking at the number of booking-related emails and phone calls versus the total number of bookings to see if we were able to lighten the load on the business owner and make the process of finding the booking options easier. Looking at these same booking numbers but with regard to new clients would also be insightful, as a rise in those numbers would signify that they felt confident enough with the information provided to book on their own. Alternatively, if the numbers stayed the same all around, we would know we need to make adjustments.
