Creating engagement with the Leap2Genius Website

Preserving the founder’s vision while creating interest in the product

Overview

Leap2Genius is the website of executive coach and career consultant Aliki Helman. Aliki’s Genius Method is used to bring out the unique qualities of individuals in order to create strong teams within organizations. She had a compelling message and the credentials to back it up, but her website didn’t reflect that. She needed to rethink her website design in order to increase customer engagement.  

Team and Duration

This was a 3 week design sprint working with two other UX designers, Anckia Treurnicht and Ellie Pats. We worked collaboratively and maintained constant communication with the founder and CEO of Leap2Genius, Aliki. 

Tools and Methods

• User Interviews

• Contextual Inquiry

• Business Analysis

• Journey Mapping

• Wireframes

• Prototype 

• Usability Testing

• Visual Design

• Branding

The Problem

An positive, optimistic message lost within a chaotic website.

Leap2Genius has a strong message about awakening potential within individuals to achieve their goals. It’s founder and CEO, Aliki Helman, wants to eventually turn the website into a self-sustainable business where individuals and organizations can come to ‘find their genius’.

However, the current website is confusing and what exactly the service does is unclear. There is unrelated imagery and way too much text on every page. If Aliki is going to attract and engage customers, she is going to have to rethink the structure and content of her site. She is also going to have to make her method more accessible to new users.

Solution Overview

Create excitement about the content and engagement in the service and product. 

Our design strategy for this project was multi-faceted. The ultimate goal was to create engagement with the service and product. However, this required us to rethink a range of elements that made up the site. We decided we would increase engagement the Leap 2 Genius site by:

1. Increasing calls-to-action and improving navigation flow

2. Reorganizing content making it simple and more clear

3. Emphasizing Aliki’s credibility and professional background

4. Aligning the branding and visuals to better match the product personality

Process

Learn what resonates with people about L2G through interviews and user testing

User Interviews

We interviewed past clients of Aliki’s to see what resonated with them about her services, and also to see if they had any constructive criticism. We also interviewed product managers, entrepreneurs, and HR representatives from different companies to see what about the Leap2Genius service would appeal to them.

This gave us valuable insights into what had worked for Aliki in the past, and also what about her product could use some improvement. 

Contextual Inquiry

We had people go through the Leap2Genius website and observed how they reacted. This let us know what confused people about the message and the interface, and also what aspects of the website they enjoyed.

We generally found that people were confused about what the service actually did, and also that useful bits of information were often hidden deep within the website. People responded less to the ‘new age’ explanation of the Genius Method, and more to specific points explaining each step of the process.

Affinity Mapping 

Once we had gathered our insights into what elements of the Leap2Genius service and website people liked and disliked, we did Affinity Mapping to be able to visualize and distill our findings. Through this exercise we found that a major theme was people feeling a lack of credibility in service.

They were unsure of what the service would do for them, and they were also unsure of the credentials of the website’s founder, Aliki. However, we also found that people who had worked with Aliki in the past found her personality and outlook very inspiring.

With this information, we set out design a website that would emphasize the credibility of Aliki and her service, but also maintain it’s inspiring message. 

Deliverables

Research insights, wireframes, and a prototype illustrating our design concept and visual design.

Wireframes

Results and Reflections

A significant improvement, but many more features could be implemented.

I believe we succeeded in designing a website that is easy to understand and also reflects Aliki’s vibrant personality. Our focus on calls-to-action and simplifying the information really helped people understand the service more. Also, our focus on visual design and branding (with Aliki’s input) insured that the personality of the product was not lost.

If we had more time we would have focused on making the service a fully functioning business. For example, we would include the complete Genius Assessment within the website and implement e-commerce functionality so that people could pay to take it. We would also like to create membership functionality. 

Ultimately, we feel the website is now much more user-friendly and welcoming for people who want to visit and be inspired by Aliki’s unique personality and vision.