product design - 2018

Visual Design

Update to established aesthetic:
Test results proved users preferred this update to Cleo’s established look-and-feel. By a margin of four to one!

When I rolled on at Cleo in 2014, their director of UX was in the middle of an ongoing effort to unify all of Cleo’s wide-ranging products under one all-encompassing look-and-feel and had engaged an offshore Visual Designer to do this. So what was my job? Every other aspect of UX Design: Information Architecture. Interaction Design. Usability Testing. Prototypes. Wireframes. Coordination. You name it. But the look-and-feel of Cleo’s products would remain the domain of this offshore visual designer.

Unfortunately, as years passed and the unification effort wore on, this designer’s initial vision was starting to show its age and he knew it.

So in 2017, just after I’d devised the overall structure of this new product, I sat down and created this mockup, and by implication, a much-needed update to our overall aesthetic. And when quantitative usability test results confirmed its appeal, I presented these results to my fellow members of the cross-functional leadership team.

For a number of strategic reasons, it was decided that this new aesthetic would have to wait till a 2.0 version. I would continue to direct our visual designer in the application of his aesthetic to my wireframes. Which is why all the screenshots I show from the actual production version of this application differ in both look and feel.