Monk
Revolutionizing remote work with a landing page and branding kit
Team
Alex Woon, Cassia Gray, Layla Bakhshandeh, Michelle Jenkins, Tre Muraki
Timeline
Eight weeks
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Adobe Illustrator
Problem
The lines between work and home become easily blurred when home becomes the workplace. As remote work has become a highly common work modality for many, start-up Monk seeks a solution to bring balance to remote workers. In a world brimming with tech, it's important to look up and reconnect with our surroundings, but they don't have to be mutually exclusive. Our team was challenged to create brand identity and cohesive storytelling to differentiate our client's company from other van rental companies.
Research
Competitive Analysis
Through observation, appreciation, and critique of interfaces, our team started to build an idea of techniques to employ for optimal user experience. We mixed companies that could be seen as competitors with companies appreciated for good design as appreciation to evaluate how Monk could be different while maintaining general design recognition.
User Research
In order to understand the wants and needs of our target audience, our team conducted one on one’s with people who fit within our identified potential customer personas. Following our interviews, we identified main pain points and created “how might we?” statements to then establish our main goals for the customer experience and inspire conversation on how to meet them.
Solution
Create a branding kit that caters to the client's vision of balancing luxury with wanderlust as a foundation for the company and online identity as a whole. Continue that vision through engaging UX centered in storytelling, that follows our "keep it simple, stupid" mantra.
Ideate
From four-step-sketches to harnessing the power of AI, our team started getting our ideas flowing.
Iterate
Our team went through weekly iteration cycles with feedback sessions. Here, I’ve provided an early iteration of a hi-fi frame I created for this project with critiques.
Finalize
Final Brand Kit
Final Homepage
Reflection
This project was my first official UX project, as a beginner designer, I initially really saw my role as creating design driven by aesthetics. On this project, I held much more of a UX Researcher role, one where I began to dive into the human computer interaction and explore the effectiveness of design choices beyond basic design principles. Through research, I advocated for the user in every single design decision made on our prototype. I found the case studies of other UX Researchers to be a great resource, through cross referencing for effective techniques based on their varying research methods. I then was able to apply this research in a physical form as I was responsible for taking a fine tooth comb to the hi-fi’s and polish them into the final frames.
Additionally, I expanded past just mere visual strategy and into content strategy, noticing how much copywriting is complementary and crucial to the user’s takeaways from their experience. As I also doubled as the creator of the branding kit, the studying and experimenting with brand voice I did, challenged me to create powerful narratives for our client when mixed with our visual elements.