padsquad.COM
UX Designer + Researcher | Producer
2016 Redesign of PadSquad's Corporate Website
Project role
Conducted user research based on how employees, stakeholders, customers, and clients perceived the brand through interviews and "if PadSquad were a ____" methodologies. Designed the look-and-feel with mood boards based on user findings and sketched page layouts for what would become an informative, user-friendly company website that reflected adaptability, handcrafted-ness, 'good vibes', with a polished startup feel. Provided creative strategy direction throughout visual design stages to ensure our approach remained on-brand and the interactions were intuitive for our user base while still highlighting our business assets.
DESIGN PURPOSE
At PadSquad, it's more about just advertising. It's an art and a science between technology and creative. We wanted the brand to feel trendy, yet experienced, and to be familiar, yet unique. A simple exercise of "If PadSquad were a....." helped us explore beyond advertising industry reputations and find a hand-crafted edge to help us stand out from our competitors. I conducted this exercise around the following topics: "if PadSquad were a drink, animal, car, or city."
Learnings
The results were agreed upon as drink: craft beer, animal: flying squirrel, car: a tie between Mini-Copper, Volkswagen, Tesla, and Jeep, and city: Austin, TX. After participating in this exercise, it was clear that not everyone in the company had the same perception of PadSquad as a brand; but when diving deeper into what type of company we aspired to be, how we wanted our customers to feel when working with us, and the quality of work we wanted to deliver, the values were aligned across the board. This exercise helped form that vision and produce a website that accurately depicted the type of company PadSquad represents. www.padsquad.com
MOODBOARDS
SKETCHES + DESIGN
Visual Designers: Tara Petrucci, Claudio Tellez
Developers: Claudio Tellez, Lis Cruz
Copywriter: Jennifer Gavin