The current Sounds True e-commerce site suffers from a dated design and a plethora of usability issues. I champion and art direct the redesign project. The new interface is clean, search-engine optimized, and conformant with Level AA of WCAG 2.0.
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Creative direction
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Website content strategy
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Content architecture
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Responsive website design
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Iconography design
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Wireframing
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Graphic design
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Launch implementation
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Collaboration with developers
The Problem
The Sounds True website was designed four years ago during the migration of the entire ecomm platform to Magento. I came on board too late to have any input on the design, UX, or functionality. But from the first day, I made it my mission to convince the leadership that a redesign needs to happen because so many pieces of the puzzle were just not considered fully. Because the new website was just released, I needed to build a solid case to get the project started. We started with testing in order to show solid, data-backed reasons to show usability problems. After a year of testing, the data was conclusive enough to put us in a position to definitively argue that the user experience was painful. The major problem was the homepage: Sounds True has many great products to offer from world-renown authors and teachers, but upon arriving at the homepage, the user has no idea where to start looking. The homepage, with its many sliders, does not curate any of the content in order to guide a user in search of a product suited for him.
The Sounds True app has been evolving in the past few years. Community, meditation timer, and meditation stats functionality has been added and the app is currently undergoing a facelift to match the upcoming website launch.
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Creative direction
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Ideation
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Content strategy
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Content architecture
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Iconography design
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Wireframing
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UX/UI design
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High-fidelity prototyping
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Testing/ Surveys
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Launch implementation
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Collaboration with developers
The Problem
The limited functionality of the app needed to be expanded in order to offer more value to the user. I led several ideation meetings in order to come up with a set of features we wanted to add. Some features we thought would increase the use were an addition of a community component where members could feel a part of a larger mindfulness movement and a meditation timer that would allow a user to not only time their meditation but also track it. We also wanted to add free meditations into the app and curate the content for the user providing user-friendly filtering tools. The additional challenge was the upcoming update of the e-commerce site that had major visual updates, which did not match the current app design and created an inconsistent experience for the user between the two platforms.
The Solution
The solution was to phase out the app development into two: one (Version 1.2) that would update the functionality and a second one (Version 2.0) that would add further functional improvements and a facelift to match the e-commerce platform's redesign effort. The functional requirements have undergone numerous changes, and there were many iterations, wireframes, and prototypes I created before we reached a desirable potential product.
