GENRE 2030

Objective

This was new territory for MGE (a utility company). This project benefited me the opportunity to work with the marketing team who's audience is 20-30 year old millenials led to a design and brand experience that generates interest while promoting products and programs by MGE. The goal was to connect with this audience in meaningful, yet subtle way.

My Role

Being part of a small team has both pros and cons. I try to take cons and turn them into pros. Not only was I the Brand designer, UX Researcher, Information Architect, Visual Designer, Front-end Development, UX Tester; but I also had the opportunity to be a PM and BA since ones were not assigned to the project. This allowed me to learn and become stronger in those fields.

Outcome

A simple, clean, and intuitive website that met both the business needs and wants as well as meeting, surpasing, and suprising the user. One user went on to say that he didn't know "MGE was a patron of the arts", which made the entire team know we had hit the mark. GENRE 2030.

Brand & Design

Early development of the project had us researching this age group and creating persona's to better understand how to present the project to them. We then researched streaming platforms for design inspiration. Design and development was iterative and users were brought in to provide feedback on the brand and website. The identity developed early and used two logos. The first is an homage to cinerama style, the second is a falcon, an unofficial mascot of the parent company, designed to mimic the lens of a camera.

Persona Development

In order to empathize with different users I led a persona development workshop. The marketing team worked together defining different archetype users. These users were meant to reflect the needs, wants, and challenges so we could work through possible solutions when designing the website.

Felicia Photographer Persona — Felicia Photographer

Iterative to Completion

Early concepts were missing the mark with users. Testing showed that users thought the design was either too busy or overly complex. We pivoted quickly with the designs, simplifiying and testing again.

After reworking the design and conducting usability sessions, the business was able to move forward with the design. There was a lot of good feedback during post launch usability sessions, and having the business see and hear the feedback was very beneficial. We learned that sometimes what we thought people wanted, because of early workshops and research, wasn't always true.

This is the final result!

Final thoughts

This project was so much fun. I really enjoyed doing something that was very different and hadn't been done in the utility realm, at least at MGE. I was able to push the envelope for what is expected from a utility and show that you can have positive outcomes from doing so. This project helped to develop trust with teams I hadn't worked with before and show others within the company that there is room for creativity and new horizons.

GENRE 2030