Develop calendar layouts for different personas and a website to customize templates

 

📌 PROJECT SCOPE

  • Client: Mia Ellsworth & Co.

  • Timeframe: Full-time, 6 months

  • My Role: Startup Founder
    (Acting: UX Researcher, UX Designer)

  • Team: Mia Eltiste, Bridget Hanson (Graphic Designer)

  • Methods: Generative research, Competitive analysis, Sketching, Wireframes, Pitch Deck

  • Tools: Pages, Squarespace

Project Overview

 

🚀 CLIENT KICKOFF

Mia Ellsworth & Co. creates custom planners based on personality and preferences. This project was in effort to secure grant funding from the state of Nebraska

🔎 OBJECTIVES

  • Develop template layouts for the most common custom calendar layouts

  • Create a website for online ordering with customizable layouts

  • Collect user data for layout recommendation

✏️ NOTES

I was the founder of startup and acted in many roles.

 

Methodology

  • Lean Business Model

  • Competitive Analysis

  • Personas & Template Layouts

  • Website

  • Application Wireframes

 

 💸 Lean Business Model

 

Pitch Competitions

By instinctively knowing a good business is user-centered, I developed my product alongside customers first and then learned how to leverage that success.

Through university entrepreneurship programs, I first established my startup knowledge and became (relatively) comfortable pitching my business to large audiences.

This is where I really learned how to communicate with stakeholders and business-minded people while advocating for user needs.

 

Kickstarter Campaign

I launched my first website alongside a Kickstarter campaign to expand my customer base outside of my personal network. I posted one time in a Facebook group and exceeded my goal by 200%. It was market validation of the pain points identified and a proof of concept beyond small local sales.

 

Startup Collaborative

After my first year of sales and after graduating undergrad, I moved into the Startup Collaborative. This was Omaha’s co-working space that provided business education and resources to help startups succeed.

I learned from prominent local businesses and developed my business alongside other entrepreneurs.

 

 🏅 Competitive Analysis

Included were direct competitors like Erin Condren and Blue Sky for the planner layouts and indirect competitors like Tailor Brands and Honda for tools that built custom products.

 
 

Competitive analysis findings

The biggest differentiator is the customizable aspect of the planner and the main goal of a custom tool needed to balance choice fatigue with personalization.

 

Must-haves

  • Immediate visual feedback on custom choices

  • The ability to go back and change something

  • Templates to modify (not starting from scratch)

 

Nice-to-haves

  • Tailor recommendations to user’s needs

  • Drag-and-drop layout builder

  • Repeat customer information saved

  • Subscription model for quarterly, semi-annual, or annual calendars

 

👥 Personas + Templates

 

Persona Development

Objectives:

  • Give customers a starting point with templates

  • Utilize previous customer data to develop a recommendation algorithm

  • Track layout changes from repeat customers to better define personas

 

Layout Types

  • Horizontal

  • Vertical

  • Categorized

  • Monthly

 

Which layouts were chosen to be templates were not only determined by their sales. The template named “Ellsworth” wasn’t as popular, but it met my needs of having a split schedule for tentative plans and avoided a highly regimented structure. I knew if I found these simple differences vital to my success, I shouldn’t eliminate other layouts just based on sales numbers. So, I created the personas.

Characteristics that came through based on my interviews, secondary research, and comparing hundreds of custom layouts for similarities. Through all the aggregated information I created personas reflected in the layout’s name. These characteristics factored into the messaging for each product and what answers the quiz had.

💭 Reflection

Industry Takeaways

Being involved in the startup world taught me a lot about the business perspective and how to communicate with stakeholders. I apply this knowledge to my UX recommendations and see it as a key differentiator in my work today.

 

Personal Takeaways

I gained a lot of skills during my time running a company including public speaking, copywriting, managing a product through the entire lifecycle, and much more.

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