CarbonX is an early-stage startup that aims to create an ecosystem of services that change how green projects are financed. The current strategy targets to:
- Raise funding for climate-focused startups by consulting and connecting them with investors that seek alternative ESG investment opportunities
- Educate clients about ESG through professional courses offering
Due to the small scale of operations, currently, CarbonX heavily relies on its own network of potential clients to generate revenue and impact. The company has been struggling to generate any conversions through online means, including the website.
The purpose of this project was to design a website that clearly communicates the credibility and value of the services for CarbonX, as well as generates awareness for the startup to scale.
In addition to the intuitive look, the building components for the proposed design had to be easily adaptable for the Webflow builder. The deliverables included website UX/UI design, as well as service and strategy reviews and suggestions.
Project Role:
UX/UI Designer
Client:
CarbonX
Team:
2 Designers
Duration:
4 weeks (21 Mar 2021- 14 Apr 2021)
Tools:
FigJam, Figma
Skills:
Research, UX/UI Design, Project Management
In the beginning of the project, we set up a meeting with a client to propose project deliverables, timeline and UX artefacts, and to demonstrate the importance of following a user-centered design process. My design teammate and I agreed on balancing out project management responsibilities between us by taking the lead on shifting basis (organising Kanban board, planning meetings agenda, etc.), for both of us to practice the skill.
During the research phase, my teammate and I were equally engaged in secondary research, planning and conducting user interviews, personas and journey maps generation. Additionally, I facilitated affinity mapping and JTBD identification with our client.
In the define phase, I focused on understanding business goals and balancing them with user needs, generated HMW questions, a sitemap and a service blueprint. Next, during the design phase, I led the wireframing, content prioritisation and structuring, created hi-fidelity designs and interactive prototypes, incorporating user feedback during MVP iterations. Finally, I facilitated half of usability tests, iterated on the design, and modified it into the current final version, which we presented to the client.
- How might we clearly communicate CarbonX' mission and offering through website architecture and content?
- How might we build trust and credibility of CarbonX services to attract new users to participate in the ecosystem?
- How might we differentiate CarbonX to address desires and needs of wide range of clients?
Whether, your startup is looking for funding or/and boosting sales, we are open to help you at every step of your journey. We thoroughly evaluate each case and develop tailored solutions to meet your goals.
Our services include Green Fundraising, Green Investing, and ESG Education Courses, creating an extensive network of solutions to help in saving the planet.
In the next phase, CarbonX aims to accelerate commercialisation of climate tech by increasing transparency and security through blockchain technology usage.
We first looked into the market of climate marketplaces that help companies in gaining awareness and funding.
We found that:
- Climate focused companies place an importance on communicating the environmental impact they are generating.
- Investment returns are secondary to climate impact even if company offers investments management.
- Successful clients or impressive statistics are almost always part of the narrative to build trust in new users.
- To evaluate users' perception of CarbonX service and respective associated value.
- To understand users' major needs and wants.
- To discover feedback regarding current website UI.
Tasks:
Interviewees were asked a range of questions & tasks to perform to gather feedback regarding their (potential) experience with CarbonX services and website.
Total sessions:
10
Interviewees:
4 Startup founders,
2 Potential ESG students,
3 General viewers,
1 ESG Instructor
Putting the findings into affinity map, helped us to identify key user needs areas and consolidate according to website components. View details on FigJam.
To represent comprehensive list of user needs and expected outcomes, we utilised the JTBD framework. View details on FigJam.
After conducting user interviews, we had enough data to start crafting our end-user personas. These personas were referenced throughout the redesign in order to guide our design decisions moving forward.
CJMs of each of our user personas were constructed to further help us visualise the journey, overall feelings, and respective pain points for each of the steps during the interaction with the service. View details on FigJam.
Users struggle to understand what CarbonX is offering
All users had issues with interpreting the descriptions, resources and diagrams, unable to understand CarbonX's mission and its services.
Messy navigation disrupts information flow
All users expressed confusion with the website organisation and dissatisfaction with having to follow external links on various platforms to get the necessary information.
Partners and clients list is important to build users’ trust
All users highlighted that they want to see more information about the partners and successful client cases to have more trust in CarbonX's credibility.
The human-centric approach builds users’ loyalty
Clients stated that the human-centric approach and service personalisation that CarbonX provided, is the most valuable aspect to them.
Since, the existing website architecture proved to be ineffective, to identify new main pages, their contents and links, we created a sitemap for the new UI. View details on FigJam.
To visualise relationship between different service components, directly tied to customer journey, the service blueprint was constructed. View details on FigJam.
- To increase number of startups that want to list their projects and fundraise through CarbonX service platform.
- To generate sales, while making measurable impact on climate.
- To have trust in CarbonX service, knowing that they will get support at each step of their involvement.
- To have transparency and understanding of how CarbonX is operating to create a positive impact on climate.
- To have an easy navigation and appealing content architecture.
- To establish effective communication with the founding team.
- To ensure the website can be built in Webflow by a non-professional.
Below are example screens from the first hi-fi iteration. These were further changed, according to usability tests findings in section 4.4.
- To identify potential pain points of the MVP 1 by gathering feedback regarding its visual design, navigation, information architecture and content flow.
- To evaluate the evolution of understanding of CarbonX service offering in the users.
- To observe users' actions and expectations when interacting with the prototype.
Tasks:
Interviewees were asked to interact with the prototype, perform a number of tasks, and freely express their experience and understanding of the MVP 1.
Total sessions:
10
Interviewees:
3 Startup founders,
2 Potential ESG students,
5 General viewers,
In the beginning of the project, we agreed that CarbonX is going to implement our design on the Webflow platform. Therefore, throughout the project we kept track of our client's learning progression. By the end of the project, we prepared additional suggestions on translating Figma designs into the Webflow - documenting Figma file functionality, as well as listing Webflow resources.
1. To further validate the new UI in terms of functionality, usability, and design.
2. To identify the impact of the new UI on the business performance of CarbonX.
3. To evaluate additional user "wants" identified during usability tests.
1. Adding search bar or a chatbot that helps to navigate through the website, if there are many partners & courses.
2. Adding separate page that describes the scale of the problem CarbonX is solving.
3. Adding photos of team members during expeditions to improve trust to their expertise and passion.
4. Adding e-commerce functionality to CarbonX website to make a “Marketplace” of green products.
- How might we transition CarbonX services to blockchain without compromising human-centricity?
- How might we effectively standardise fundraising/investment metrics and processes in the future scaling?
- How might we evaluate and present CarbonX impact and effectiveness across different industries?
Our website design project was the first time the client engaged with UX designers. Initially, the requirement from the client was around the visual presentation of the service offering and appealing UI. However, as a UX designer, I knew that it is my job to communicate the importance of user-centered design and striking a balance between business needs and user needs. Therefore, in the beginning of the project, my teammate and I prepared the list of task pillars and UX artefacts that we would like to develop throughout the project and presented it to our client, explaining the value of "doing the right thing and doing the thing right". After this meeting, our client provided us with a great amount of support, including sharing potential interviewees contact information and actively participating in design critique sessions.
I learned how important it is to convey the value of UX to stakeholders and other team members, and how it can lead to amazing synergy in coming up with the best product designs.
Having to define, manage and build the project end-to-end, came with a great freedom to explore ideas, creating an impactful product, while practicing own management skills. At the same time, I had to deal with a lot of uncertainty in strategic direction, content, brand image and a lot more. Following the design process created structure in building the end product, enabling our team to really focus on pursuing most optimal user-centered solution.
I learned trusting the design process even if I don't know what will come out in the end, creating resilience towards uncertainty that always comes hand in hand with innovation.
During the first interviews a lot of users expressed confusion with the language and content when reading CarbonX mission and service offering. I suggested to implement the findings into reshaping the business narrative to which the client was very open. In order to communicate the right unique business value to users, we actively engaged existing CarbonX clients and founders in our design process. In addition to improving overall user experience, this greatly helped us in prioritising and structuring the content, to achieve credible brand perception and create memorable service offering narrative.
I learned how important it is to convey the mission and set the narrative by striking the balance between communicating business goals and appealing to user needs, rather than blindly sticking to given requirements.
Designed and made with Webflow
by Kamila in 2022 ❤️.
