Farm to Flame
Biomass Energy Creation
The Biomass Energy Solution
Introduction: Farm to Flame is a startup that is seeking investors to grow its biomass energy generation company. The company’s CFO came to us with a website which needed a redesign, with a focus on encouraging visitors to invest in the company via their WeFunder page.
The Problem: The website was built on the cheap, and displayed some clear violations of basic UX principles. Additionally, testing would prove that existing copy and images were leaving visitors unclear about the company’s mission, its team of co-founders, or even how to invest or purchase products from the company.
The Solution: Many aspects of the existing site needed to be addressed, but principally the site needed a visual overhaul with a structural layout that complies with core concepts of UX design.
The Designer’s Role: The project was handled with a team of 3 designers, including myself. While we all pitched in user testing and research, my particular focus was to work on the “About Us” and “Contact” pages of the website.
Phases of Design Process & Journey: This being my first project working with other designers, I was delighted to see how quickly we were able to pinpoint clear issues with the website’s layout. We dedicated our first week to fixing what were clear UX problems, including consistency and alignment of images and elements. And in my case, the two pages I was responsible for had plenty of room for improvement just from a visual perspective.
We quickly began to compile notes that listed all the areas of concern that were immediately identifiable in the original website. For every page specific things were noted, along with potential solutions for us to adopt in regards to our assigned screens.
From these detailed notes, we put together some wireframes to show the new look and improved layout. For my work on the About page, I really wanted to add more info about both the company and its co-founders. The Contact page had a contact form, which I duplicated to differentiate general inquiries against those who were looking for a quote on one of the company’s products.
We were able to conduct the first round of testing using these wireframes, while also having something visual to present to the client. Five participants were tested in a moderated setting, with the findings documented and then applied into our high fidelity iterations.
My screens specifically were designed to elaborate more on the company and its team for the About page. For the contact page I condensed the two forms into a single one, with a toggle at the top to differentiate between product quote requests as opposed to general inquiries.
Once we presented our hi-fi designs to the client, some revisions were requested. After making some tweaks we were ready for our second round of testing where, among other things, we discovered that the site was really leading with the company’s products while leaving visitors unclear on what the company was about or how their biomass technology worked. Our final hi-fi designs included a homepage redesign that led with a short mission statement, rather than pushing products in front of viewers first.
My two pages consisted of reformatting the About page to lead with a video that does a good job of explaining what the Farm to Flame is all about. The mission statement was also bulleted out with the help of iconography that more easily communicated the core concepts. The Contact page form was once again modified, leaving the form itself for general inquiries and a dedicated “get a quote” button for customers interested in purchasing the company’s products. All of these iterations were prompted by feedback received in round two of user testing.
Key Findings & Conclusions: This was such an enjoyable project not only because I wasn’t working alone, but because we had an active client who gave timely feedback. User testing was also such an essential part because we found out pretty late in the game that we still were not addressing some core understandings that visitors to the site needed. Creating consistency among pages using components in Figma was a good learning experience, which helped save time when making changes and also kept our styles the same. I look forward to working with a team again, but feel even better equipped for the next solo project that comes my way!