Responsibilities
Primary & Secondary Research,
Stakeholder Interview,
Journey Mapping & Persona Generation
Wireframing,
Prototyping,
Testing &Validation.
Team members
Amrutha Anup
Aniruddh Krishnan
Duration
3 Months
Year
2021
Tools
Figma
Mentor
Harshit Gupta
PESEats
Art of Living has a user base of over 500 million people, yet they were facing a user retention crisis. In 2022, they noticed the bounce rate of users had increased and the overall traction in their website had reduced drastically. In an effort to remedy this, we undertook this project to understand what was really going on and improve the overall user experience of the site.
Project Overview
This project tackles the various issues present in the Art of Living website. The website was known to have an all encompassing interface, but what it has in content it doesn’t make up in hierarchy, organization and design.
Through this project we aimed to understand the different problems, experienced and new users face as they navigate the site and solve these issues by aligning the design with user needs.
This is done through extensive testing and iteration in order to come up with a design that improves conversion rate and overall efficiency.
COntext
Art of Living has a vast user base across states and countries. They always prioritize the needs and happiness of the user. However, sentiment was unfortunately not reflected in their website, as there was various issues regarding organization, consistency, and usability.
Our main goal with this redesign was to bridge the gap between the Art of Living aspirations and the user’s expectations.
We established this by organizing the layout, restructuring the placements of several elements in each individual webpage, restructuring hierarchy, simplifying several design elements and eliminating unnecessary features and elements while getting each change reported and recorded via through user testing and validation. Developer Errors were also flagged and the overall margin of user error was brought down.
Objective
To decrease user bounce rate by redesigning the Art of Living digital experience.
How might we encourage users to utilize the Art of Living website and app for their wellness needs?
Outcome
The result was a website with a completely new information architecture and design system that was designed after extensive usability studies, testing and validation. all the while focusing on solving all the numerous issues the existing site has. These include:
Home Screen: We edited the layout and look of the landing/home page making it more accessible and user friendly by creating a proper hierarchy, removing unnecessary elements and also maintained consistency across all screens to make all the screens under the website more cohesive.
Program Page: We implemented a contrasting design system and efficient hierarchy, to make the information more perceptible.
Search Bar: The Search Screen has been redesigned with a uniform color scheme and consistent CTAs, with a clearer hierarchy between the category of each search result.
Navigation Bar: We optimized the navigation bar to be more vibrant, less cluttered and use simpler language for ease of use.
Overall Efficiency & Consistency: Overall, we implemented a unified design system across all pages, solved minor issues like inconvenient pop up banner, inconsistent CTA’s with poor placements and improved the general hierarchy and organization to stay familiar with the user and their expectations.
limitations
Lack of diversity in sample size: The stakeholders were based on availability and even though we interviewed over 30 stakeholders, only a minority of them were past the age of 30, which is the core user audience for the Art of Living website. It was also difficult to find experienced stakeholders for testing.
Lack of freedom: Since this was a redesign project, there were limited opportunities to create new features that would enhance the experience as we needed to focus on improving the existing features.
learnings
User Feedback & Testing: Throughout this project we primarily focused our resources on extensively conducting usability studies, personal interviews and validation tests. This iterative process of reviewing our product and collecting feedback drastically helped us improve on its functionality.
Consistency in Design: This project taught us the negative impact generated by lack of consistency, organization and efficiency. Due to these problems, users, even those familiar with tech, found it difficult to complete basic tasks and it derailed their perception of the website as a whole.
Usability Studies
High-Fidelity Prototype
Wireframes
Information
Architecture
Ideation
Research
Discover
Site Evaluations
User Persona
Journey
Mapping
Style Guide
Discover
Define
Develop
Deliver
Develop
Define
Deliver
Design
research & exploration
In order to explore the different problems faced by the frequent website users, we extensively conducted usability studies to understand how they interacted with the website and what obstacles they came across.
These usability studies helped us gain insights on how the user thinks and helped us pinpoint the exact issue in the website.
Additionally we also conducted an evaluation from our perspective to see what problems the website had and what features were efficient enough to not be redesigned.
We also did a benchmark comparison to understand the user flow of other mental health websites and how the Art of Living website was different.
stakeholder Mapping
Our primary stakeholders were segregated into four groups
Experienced Art of Living Users
New Art of Living Users
Users unfamiliar with AOL but navigates other mental health websites
Completely unfamiliar users
Our goal is to redesign the website to be universally accessible to all type of users and guide them along the website with efficient designs.
Journey Mapping & Persona
To consolidate the insights gained from our interviews and focus groups and to further understand the problem in depth we used tools like User Journey Mapping, Empathy & Persona. This helped us track the different triggers for a problem and its progression.
It also helps us stay aware of the users pain points, expectations and goals.
Student Journey Mapping
Student User Persona
Problem Definition
The Art of Living Website had many issues with user flow, consistency and design. This was due to the multiple redesigns the site underwent under different designers and developers. The result was a site that had a different design system for every page which left users confused and frustrated with the everchanging functionalities of the site.
Lack of Consistency
Lack of consistent design system across website pages, the presentation, layout, navigation bar, icons, colors are different in every page.
Lack of Efficiency
Lack of proper navigation, lack of efficient user flow, lack of purposeful presentation. There were multiple problems with icons and placement of features in the website.
Problem statements
T 0 redesign the Art of Living website to solve existing issues and enhance the user experience and drastically improve conversion rates.
consolidated Problems
Inefficient Organization
Tedious Chatbot
Lack of Information Transparency
Inefficient Organization
Cluttered UI
Lack of Hierarchy
Poor Navigation
Users had trouble trying to categorize the content available in the website and were overwhelmed with the amount of courses that were present in the website.
The users also had trouble backtracking to previous pages and often get lost while navigating through the website.
Inefficient Pop Up
The location of the popup asking the user to join the workshop hides most of the navbar options thus making many features like the search bar inaccessible to the user unless the popup is closed.
Complex Terminologies
There were a lot of different terminologies and this confused and frustrated the users to eventually abandon the task of finding a focus group
Inefficient CTAs
The website has many CTAs with inconsistent color schemes and designs which confused some users and the placements of some of the CTAs were problematic in the sense that users had difficulty finding the CTA or found the location unpleasant.
Search Bar
Misleading search bars along with unnecessary search results make it confusing for the users to use the feature.
Information Architecture
Primarily, it was crucial to map out the information architecture of the new website so as to plan how each page would interact with each other.
This helped us lay the groundwork for more improvements, making sure that the revamped website was cohesive.
design system
Primarily, it was crucial to map out the information architecture of the new website so as to plan how each page would interact with each other.
This helped us lay the groundwork for more improvements, making sure that the revamped website was cohesive in design and functionality.
Testing & Validation
To validate whether the new designs met the user expectations, we conducted extensive usability tests with the same sample group of new and experienced users and collected insights.
Users preferred the new layout and presentation. The new approach made them go through the content better.
The button design encouraged users to click on it. The new navigation bar was appreciated by the users.
The pop-up’s designed made the users more engaged.
The design was made interactive to enhance the user experience and give the user a sense of involvement and reduce fatigue.
A few designs did not work out like the drop down menu and a few terminologies used.
The font size used on the banner was too big for the users.
Evaluation of Improvement
Dull and cluttered
Problem:
Website looked dull and cluttered at first glance. Not that friendly.
Solution:
Edited the layout and look of the landing/home page making it more accessible and user friendly by creating a proper hierarchy and removing unnecessary elements.
Also maintained consistency across all screens to make all the screens under the website more cohesive.
Lack of consistency and a proper design system
Problem:
Cards looked different and seemed to belong to different categories as a whole. And not to the same family.
Solution:
Consistent and calmer looking program cards that provide the first glance information about them.
Boring and uninteractive
Problem:
The locations section looked very boring and didn’t have enough information.
Solution:
Displaying the worldwide locations in a better, cooler style.
Lack of hierarchy
Problem:
Unnecessary review tab at the top of the screen that, quoting a user, felt very shady like they’re shoving the agenda into you.
Solution:
Set the hierarchy for reviews and put them at the end.
Hapazard placement
Problem:
Search Bar was placed on the left of the screen and hapazardously placed below the categories bar, causing some trouble to the user to navigate and find the search bar.
Solution:
Search Bar has been placed above the categories bar and the bar has been centered to give a higher hierarchy to the search bar
Home screen
Search Bar
Lack of Consistency
Problem:
A Color Scheme completely different with that of the homepage with an inconsistent CTA and poor hierarchy between each category of the search result.
Solution:
The Search Screen has been redesigned with a uniform color scheme and consistent CTAs, with a clearer hierachy between the category of each search result.
After
Before
High Fidelity Wireframes
Responsibilities
Secondary Research,
Journey Mapping & Persona Generation,
Benchmarking
Brainstorming & Ideation,
Concept Generation,
Wireframing,
Prototyping,
Testing & Validation.
Team members
Amrutha Anup
Aniruddh Krishnan
Aditi Malik
Chahak Jain
Pranati Shanbog
Duration
2 Months
Year
2022
Tools
Figma
Mentor
Praveen Uchal
Art of Living App
This project commenced after our website project ended.
The app had a variety of similar problems but the internship was more complex in nature as it required us to do extensive benchmarking of other mental health apps, consult seasoned professionals and experts to take their point of view, and incorporate the vast functionalities of the Art of Living app in a more organized regulated fashion.
The internship also gave us access to many experienced users who gave us insights on the impact of the Art of Living center and how they interacted with the app.
The internship was a core learning opportunity as it helped us connect with numerous experts in various fields, reminding us that ever stakeholder has an insight to offer.
It also further our team collaboration skills as we worked together on iterations, benchmarking and brainstorming sessions together and constantly aligned our goals to stay on the same page.
However, due to the restrictions of NDA clauses, I’m unable to provide further details on the project for now.
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