Rebrand project defining brand guidelines & design system and integrate into brand-consistent screens across teams, ready for development.
Role
UX Designer & Researcher
Duration
2 Quarters
Deliverables
Brand guidelines, design system, brand-integrated high-fidelity designs
Stakeholders
Design Team, Brand Design Lead, CEO
Tools
Figma, Google Suite, Trello
I collaborated with our brand design lead, CEO, and a small design team on Umee's rebrand project with the goal to align Umee's visual identity to its mission and core values.
My Contribution:
Umee lacked brand guidelines and design standards, resulting in inconsistent designs that didn't align with our mission or vision.
Umee's visuals, tone, and atmosphere needed to foster community building and a sense of belonging.
Umee stakeholders needed a cohesive brand identity and design system to support all future design and brand decisions.
Umee's Vision
Umee is an innovative community-building platform that supports members of exclusive communities (gyms, clubs, and other community organizations) by fostering connection and promoting social wellness.
Umee.socialOlder members of exclusive membership communities (gyms and other social clubs) over 40 years old. This demographic is at the highest risk for negative health outcomes resulting from the loneliness epidemic.
Umee planned to soft launch to three gyms the next quarter, so we focused our research on gym members to gain an understanding of exclusive communities. We could later apply our insights to other communities more broadly.
Our goal for research was to identify the user goals for our product.
A shift in business priorities required us to expedite our project, forcing us to postpone interviews and concentrate on brand visualization.
We needed insights to guide our visualization process, so we analyzed competing apps instead.
Additionally, since I had already recruited two interview participants I advocated to my lead that I should follow through with those user interviews.
I interviewed two members of exclusive gym communities:
Age: 61
Member of YMCA
Gavin and his wife are members of a local YMCA. They joined their YMCA community through mutual friends and wanted to keep active. Gavin doesn't really meet new people outside of the YMCA and mutual friends.
When Gavin's father passed away from heart disease, his wife and close friends helped him feel supported through the grieving process.
Gavin's favorite app is Spotify. He listens to Grateful Dead and a finance podcast recommended to him by his son.
"The YMCA community has so many members, I don't know if I could get to know everyone."
Age: 64
Member of a local badminton club
Member of her badminton community for over 30 years. Joined for her love of badminton and to play with her longtime friends.
Her badminton community has been an outlet for traumatic moments of her life. She says the physical and social aspects have been invaluable outlets for her emotional healing.
Elaine played badminton her entire life and uses her membership to exercise and stay in tough with long-time and new friends.
"I need to play badminton, and I guess it's where I socialize the most."
I led research into three competitors where Umee drew most of its visual inspiration: Nextdoor, Hinge, and Meetup.
I analyzed their unique value(s), features, and advantages/disadvantages to understand their perceived value.
We needed to define Umee's core brand values to guide Umee visuals and messaging. We worked closely with our CEO to ensure we built from his vision. My Brand Lead started the visualization process by leading mood board exercises.
Mood boards helped us refine Umee's vision of fostering community into emblematic words and imagery that inspire feelings we wanted users to experience.
The feeling we tried to capture with this particular mood board was a sense of "belonging"
When thinking of "belonging" what words and images come to mind? I pictured nature, specifically mountains and the ocean, and feeling part of something much greater than myself – the phenomenon known as the "overview effect".
After weeks of research, visualization exercises, and collaborative discussion, we refined Umee's mission and vision into 3 core brand values.
Umee is a warm, cozy place. The experience should be bright and comfortable.
Umee is rooted in empathetic relationships. Genuine emotional connection is the foundation of positive relationships.
Umee is for every member of community, fostering connection between users no matter who their differences.
At this point, we solidified Umee's brand foundation. Umee's Q1 soft launch was postponed due to development team setbacks. This allowed us to dedicate Q1 to establishing brand guidelines and a design system.
In Q1 of 2024, we needed to deliver brand guidelines and a design system, then I would lead the integration of those deliverables into Umee's Match and Chat features. We used imagery from our mood boards along with our core values of warm, empathetic, and inclusive to explore logo, color, typography, tone (our brand guidelines).
The core components of Umee's visual identity.
Since Umee lacked design principles, we needed to define the essentials, so I collaborated closely with another designer to define spacing, text, and color. I advocated for a flexible 8 point grid system so that our designs were consistent and responsive.
Since we had little time to build out our design system, I advocated for defining components based on need. For example, buttons were used throughout Chat and Match screens, so we should define rules for their color and padding for primary and secondary CTA buttons.
After discussions with my CEO and Design Lead, we decided I should define design system components while I integrated Match and Chat screens. This allowed me to prioritize design system components and test their functionality directly, putting us on track for Q1 OKRs.
My responsibilities included:
Because these were the first designs to undergo brand integration and I was under a short deadline, the process was extremely iterative. I received daily feedback from my PM and created new designs for her and my CEO's approval.
The brand work laid the foundation, but getting the details just right required a constant cycle of feedback and iteration.
The brand and design guidelines created the basis for Umee's visual identity that was grounded in its mission and core values.
The Match and Chat (Spark and Banter) features I brought to high-fidelity are the core of the Umee app. These features are a design reference for all sequential features and components.
As new features continue to be built, more design components will need defined:
The best metric of success for this project won't be seen until after we soft launch to gyms and begin to scale. However, with the approval of my leads and CEO, the work I have done (particularly in Match and Chat features) has put Umee in the right direction to achieve our mission and business goals.
