Overview

Starting from a clean slate

Phonak tasked us with a full web redesign including branding and visual design. Phonak is a hearing care brand that services hearing care professionals (B2B) and patients (B2C). Our creative team was a total of 5 people and I was 1 of 2 UX designers.

Problem

Finding the priority

Phonak’s biggest challenge lies with their content ecosystem. There were various different stakeholders, from both hearing care providers and patients, and they all envisioned a different priorities for the website. Our goal was finding the right balance of B2B and B2C content that felt useful for both audiences.

Process

Structuring the work phases

Every process is different depending on the project, scope, and timeline, but for a website redesign I usually follow a general set of UX phases which focuses on research, ideation, and execution. With this scope, we worked in an agile, collaborative environment that was structured around sprints.

Research

Discovering the landscape

In the beginning stages of the project, I performed a competitive, content, and creative audit for over 8 other hearing care brands. I also performed a audit on leading electronics and technology companies such as Sonos, Sony, and Microsoft to see how they dealt with mixed B2B and B2C audiences.

Information Architecture

Analyzing the content ecosystem

To organize various categories of content, we used various exercises to get to the right architecture including affinity mapping and card sorting. For Phonak, we created a ton of new content that supported the emotional well-being of the hearing loss community.

Testing

Gathering the data

During sitemap ideation, we had to find the right balance of supportive patient content (net new) and product/professional content (current content). UX, copy, and content worked closely to find the most suitable page labeling to provide understandability for users and optimization for business. Once we felt the work was in a good spot, we wanted to back up our expertise with real user data.

Due to the lack of budget, the team had no room for third-party testing. I pushed the team to provide space within the timeline so we could execute our own testing. With the approval, I went ahead and scouted internal family & friends who have experience with hearing loss or are professionals in the field. I then created a basic prototype and moderator guide to lead the test.

Through testing I discovered so many important details that needed to be addressed. Above all, the need for supportive emotional content that doesn’t currently exist within the industry and the need for transparency in the hearing care process.

Work

Turning insights into design

After sitemap execution the team began sprints. The project consisted of 8 sprints and this equated to designing and writing 50+ pages. It was an extremely collaborative experience between UX, visual, and copy.

Design System

Finding the priority

After the first few sprints, the team formulated components that worked best with the content. I built out a UX and digital design library within Figma and once this system was in place, we were able to seamlessly hand over the files to the development team. The UX and visual team had weekly status calls with the development team to ensure the correct design and interactions.

Takeaways

Building experiences grounded in testing

There were many insights throughout this project, whether it came to defining the internal process or learning more about the hearing care industry. But above all of that was the importance of testing, testing, AND testing. On future projects, I will remind myself the necessity of testing to validate our thinking. It was a reminder that we're not designing for ourselves and each audience has a different set of needs and aspirations that can only be discovered through testing. After user insights, the work felt purposeful and supportive to our audience.