Creating new business value through inclusive design
Website Redesign - Practice for Psychotherapy
Case Study :
UX/UI Design
A vibrant city in the Greater Dusseldorf & Cologne area in Germany, boasts a rich cultural fabric, with 40% of its population having an immigration background.
Recognizing the importance of providing accessible therapy services to this diverse community, we were approached by a psychotherapist from this city to redesign their practice’s website.
My Role
Product Designer
Tools
Pen & Paper | Figma | FigJam | WordPress | Trello | Google Workspace | Skype
Timeline
Ongoing (May 2023 – Present)
Challenge
Create an exceptional digital platform tailored to the unique needs of expats, refugees, and individuals seeking therapy, ensuring that their experiences were met with understanding, inclusivity, and support right from the start.
Collaboration
For this ongoing project, I partnered with the UX Designer Kirsten Annecke to tackle the challenges at hand. While each of us had specific responsibilities, we collaborated closely throughout the process. We adopted an Agile framework and utilized the Kanban method for iterative development and efficient project management.
My Responsibilities
As Product Designer, my role involved aligning the business goals with user needs.
Key activities performed by me:
- Business and UX competitive analysis, including SWOT analysis
- Created proto-personas
- Developed user stories and job stories
Activities performed in collaboration:
- Reviewing the current website to identify areas for improvement
- Conducting insightful stakeholder interviews to gather valuable input
- Synthesizing gathered insights to inform the design process
- Identifying design opportunities to enhance the user experience
- Utilizing the Crazy 8’s technique to generate innovative ideas and concepts
Constraints
The website needed to adhere to guidelines set by the German statutory health insurance and the German Psychotherapy Chamber, as the client is an approved psychotherapist and a member of these institutions. Additionally, the website had to comply with local privacy policies and regulations, and maintain consistency with the current brand colors and typography. The client also expressed the desire to continue using WordPress as the platform for the website.
Confidentiality Note
To maintain the privacy and confidentiality of our valued client and competitors, we have chosen to keep their specific information anonymous in this case study. However, we are more than willing to share detailed information about the client and competitors with those who inquire and express a genuine interest in our project. Please feel free to reach out to us for further discussions and additional information regarding this case study.
Design Process
1. Discovery & Empathize
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype & Test
5. Implement
During this phase, we identified and defined the problems, goals, business objectives, and user needs.
Before commencing the project with the client, we analyzed their current website and prepared a script for the stakeholder interview. Our objective was to gain a better understanding of the business goals, needs, existing clients, and website users. We also researched and added an EU privacy-compliant analytics plugin to the website, with the client’s consent, to collect website visitor data moving forward.
Insights gained through Stakeholder Interview
Analyzing the data from the stakeholder interview, and relying on the data that he provided us on the demographic his practice has served in the past four years, we identified the target audience for the website.
The target audience includes:
- Residents where the practice is located and adjacent areas.
- People with a migration background seeking therapy in German, Spanish, Italian, or English.
- Individuals who prefer to work with a male therapist.
- Patients with ADHD, burnout, personality disorders, life challenges, depression, anxiety, etc.
- Holders of public health insurance.
Business & UX Competitive Analysis
We conducted a comprehensive analysis of the market landscape and local competitors. Our focus was on competitors who offered in-person sessions and typically had one or two therapists per practice, and who were also approved by the German statutory health insurance.
Heuristic Evaluation
We evaluated the usability and accessibility of the current website through a heuristic audit, which helped us identify opportunities for improvement.
Defining Requirements
At this point we had already identified the business’ target audience as an specific group of individuals whose needs are not adequately addressed by local competitors and the value proposed by our client to these individuals.
UX Design Requirements
Keeping in mind the needs and goals from both business and users, we defined the requirements:
- multilingual website to attend the plural local population.
- add a main header to improve usability.
- refresh UI to make the website visually more interesting and modern.
- responsive web design so that pages render well on different devices and screen sizes.
- concise copy with a accessible and inclusive language and tone of voice.
- include a FAQ to address common questions.
- incorporate specific information about the psychotherapy procedure in the context of the German public health insurance.
- add images from the practice to establish a genuine connection with visitors.
- keep the new design aligned with the brand identity, and respective policies.
Proto-Personas
To ensure our design decisions were well-informed and user-centered, we developed proto-personas for Lean UX. By creating user and job stories for each persona, we gained a deeper understanding of their unique requirements, enabling us to design a website that resonates with their specific needs and aspirations.
Allow me to introduce you to Thomas, Giancarlo, and Carmen.
With a wealth of information at our disposal, we delved into the defining phase, sculpting a clear vision for the website that would captivate and resonate with our target audience.
User Flows
To create an intuitive and seamless user experience, we crafted user flows that visualized how the target audience would interact with the redesigned website. Our primary goal was to ensure that users, regardless of language or background, could effortlessly navigate the multilingual website and access the relevant information they seek.
Information Architecture & Content Strategy
Taking into account the client’s preference for WordPress and its long-term maintenance benefits, we decided to retain the platform. To optimize content discoverability and enhance search engine visibility, we meticulously organized the user flows into a clear and concise sitemap. This structure ensures that both users and search engines can easily navigate and find the desired content on the website.
Armed with a deep understanding of our users and their aspirations, we embarked on the ideation phase, unearthing innovative concepts and design solutions that would captivate and engage our diverse audience.
Generating Ideas
In our ideation phase, we embraced the Crazy 8’s technique—a powerful brainstorming exercise derived from the Design Sprint methodology. By rapidly generating a diverse range of ideas, we were able to identify concepts with immense potential to elevate the user experience and meet the unique requirements of our target audience.
Content Creation
With a solid foundation in place, we entered the critical stage of UX writing and content creation. Collaborating closely with the client, we’re developing compelling content that not only considers the needs of the target audience but also embraces an informative, inclusive, and accessible tone of voice and language.
