[03]
Role
Product Designer
Duration
Jan · Apr 2023
Team
Communication Team
2 Product Designers
3 Developers
Type
Product Design
Product Strategy
Research
Overview
UCI is a financial institution specializing in mortgage products. For this project, we worked as an embedded design team, focusing on supporting their internal products, improving their design system, and contributing across different product areas.
This case study covers the Communication Room project. If you want to learn more about the broader context, I've linked a post from Redbility, the company I was working for at the time.
The Goal
The communications team wanted to integrate a press room into uci.com, making it easy and intuitive to navigate, with the goal of fostering transparent communication between stakeholders. They came in with an initial wireframe and a list of requirements the press room should meet.
Kickoff
To align on goals and clear up questions from our initial analysis, we ran a joint session between the design and communications teams. That first meeting was key: we resolved content questions, sharpened the business objectives, developed a shared understanding of our users, and laid out the first steps in our strategy.
Experienced individual user
Comes from the Newsletter
Inexperienced individual user
Comes from the Newsletter
Press
Direct traffic
Real estate or renovation professionals
Comes from the Newsletter
Not relevant
Timeline
After the alignment session, we put together a project timeline that accounted for business, design, and development needs. After a few rounds of review and factoring in that this wasn't our only active project, we landed on a plan that worked for all teams.
Analysis
With the timeline approved, we started the analysis phase. We focused on four areas: the current state of the website, site metrics, user definition, and a benchmarking study of other financial institutions.
Current website
We started by auditing the information architecture and content of the existing press room to understand where we were starting from.
Metrics
With access to analytics from the dev team, we were able to pull some useful data.
Most visited pages
(relevant for prioritizing key sections in the new structure)
Device breakdown
(important for defining breakpoints)
Users
We created brief profiles for each to keep their needs front of mind throughout the design process.
Individuals or organizations connected to the media and journalism space. This user visits the site looking for specific information and resources that can support their editorial work
Content types
A private user with financial knowledge, interested in news, reports and updates related to the financial sector. Their motivations can vary, from making investment decisions to understanding the financial position of a company
Content types
A private user with little to no knowledge of finance or mortgages who uses the communication room as a reliable and accessible source for clear, easy-to-understand information. This is a key user type for the press room, as it represents an opportunity to build trust in the brand
Content types
A real estate professional who uses the communication room to stay up to date on relevant financial and economic information that may directly or indirectly affect their operations and decisions. This is a less critical user type
Content types
Benchmarking
In the context of a website, naming refers to the process of choosing and creating a name for a site, product or service.
The access point on a website is a specific location or entry path that serves as the main gateway to reach information.
We understand information architecture as the practice of deciding how to organize the parts of something so that it can be easily understood.
Web content refers to any file hosted on a website that is transmitted and delivered through a web browser.
This page acts as a central point from which users can access specific content or navigate to subtopics.
This refers to how news articles and press releases are presented and structured on a website, taking into account the different user types they are aimed at.
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42% of the sites analyzed use the name Communication Room (Sala de Comunicación).
33% of the sites analyzed use the name Press Room (Sala de prensa).
17% of the sites analyzed use the name Press (Prensa).
The remaining 8% use Communication Space (Espacio de comunicación).
We recommended adopting "Communication Room" ("Sala de Comunicación") as it signals a space for all stakeholders, not just press.
Looking at how these sections are surfaced within their respective sites:
For a corporate website, the clear pattern is main navigation.
We mapped out the information architecture of each site and color-coded content types to identify the most common patterns.
For navigation, the sites we analyzed break down like this:
We recommended a second navigation level, taking advantage of a component that already existed in our Design System.
Most sites are fairly aligned on content. A few things stood out for UCI specifically:
Almost every site uses a hub page as the entry point to the press room. The first content users encounter is always news and press releases.
What usage patterns repeat the most?
The first content users encounter on the page is always news and press releases.
What best practices can we identify?
Endesa makes strong use of a sitewide search bar across the entire Press Room. This makes sense when there's a large volume of content.
What content is being highlighted the most?
Pages tend to emphasize unusual content that stands out from competitors. (e.g. podcasts)
Nearly all of the sites analyzed use a hub page as the press room homepage.
Common patterns worth bringing into UCI's design:
Cross-selling
Related article suggestions at the end of each piece.
Downloads
Downloadable content sections (press release PDFs, images, video).
Reading time
Estimated reading time displayed on each article.
Tags
Content tags that link through to topic landing pages.
Information Architecture
Once the research phase wrapped up, we focused on defining the new IA, incorporating everything we'd learned. We ran a workshop with the design and communications teams and worked through four iterations before landing on the final version (v.04).
CONTEXTUAL ACCESS:
CONTEXTUAL ACCESS:
CONTEXTUAL ACCESS:
CONTEXTUAL ACCESS:
Conceptualization
Once the IA was defined, we moved into conceptualization. A big part of this phase was deciding what would actually make it into the MVP and what would have to wait. Working within real constraints, whether time, development capacity, or scope, forced us to make deliberate decisions about what mattered most. Here's how we approached the three main areas:
Content strategy
The architecture was designed with each user type in mind. Every key section of the press room maps back to a specific audience, so anyone who arrives finds content that's relevant to them.
Business cross-selling
We built in contextual cross-selling tailored by user type.
For example, links to specialist mortgage products in content aimed at individual users, or links to renovation-related tools in articles tagged with relevant topics (like the Energy Efficiency Calculator).
Design system
For the first MVP, we used almost exclusively existing components from the Design System.
For any modules that didn't exist yet, the development team estimated the effort involved, and we decided case by case whether they'd go into the MVP or a future update.
Shipped & live
You can explore the final result at uci.com. Due to the nature of agency work, our contract with UCI wrapped up shortly after delivery, so I wasn't able to track longer-term metrics or iterate further. But seeing it live is, in itself, a good ending to the story.
Challenges and Learnings
One of the things that made me reflect most on this project happened right at the start. The press room was on a push to launch quickly, without having been properly thought through or with much consideration for the people who'd actually be using it. When our team stepped in, we were initially seen as a bottleneck.
That perception shifted as soon as we started sharing research findings and data. The business and communications teams realized we were working toward the same goal. Changing that initial impression is part of the job as a designer and while it can be exhausting, it's one of the most valuable things we can do.