This is how i redesigned the East Kilbride Housing Association website and helped them meet their customers' demand and realise the vision of a brand new web app, designed for the future of housing in East Kilbride and Scotland.

East Kilbride Housing Association was formed in 1994.

They have a total of 515 properties with almost 200 having been developed or acquired since 1999. The Association is run by a Management Board, which is made up of a cross section of local people committed to ensuring that a wide range of housing is locally available

01

Understanding

Strategy Research and Insights

I began the market, user and stakeholder research working with the key business stakeholders and other members of the team to truly understand the market trends and expectations. I aligned this information with competitive analysis and product market fit to uncover a true insight into the larger market place.

I also continually gathered data about what our proposed user groups might need, how they might perform tasks and what pain points and opportunities might arise.

As the project developed I continually kept iterating and improving my knowledge around what the business and users required.

We met regularly and I would make sure that everyone was always involved with every iteration or change. We mainly worked in small sprints and close-knit teams just make sure the communication channel with the users and stakeholders was always open and clear.

Snap shots of some sketch notes from the research and insights phase.
“Sketch notes helped everyone get a clear vision of the product. They also enabled fast decisions and iterations of possible solutions.”

02

Clear outcome

Product Definition / Design

I moved onto turning insights into requirements, this continued to build upon the insights and knowledge gained in the research stage. I worked with the team to define the clear requirements for the product. With the agreement of the main group and stakeholders I established a set of clear primary features and goals centred around tasks that users could accomplish and balanced them with the business objectives.

Once the product definition was clear I worked on establishing user and business steps and flows, making sure everything was as clear as possible.

Example of one of the work walls we used to better understand the user flows.

03

Evolving

Iteration / Solution

With the direction for the product fully established I moved on to turning the feature set and flows into preliminary sketches and mocks.

I worked closely with the members of the team and stakeholders making sure we all were fully involved with the process of iterating and developing the designs and flows.

We met regularly, making sure that everyone was clear on how the designs were evolving. I also worked within a small scrum team, each sprint was short no more than a few weeks, this kept each iteration small making the decision process simple and fast.

After each sprint our goal was to try and have a working prototype or feature set to demo or release.

  1. Insights

    Within each iteration we drove deeper into the high level insights already gained. This gives us a clearer understanding on how to move towards success.

  2. Design

    Once we felt like we had enough insights we move on to exploring as many solutions as possible, continually narrowing this down untill we are happy with the proposed solution.

  3. Test

    We then get the MVP into the users hands as quickly as possible so we can start testing and validating our theories.

Reflections

New behaviour.

The EKDHA website users now have a clean and clear way to get to the information they need. This reduces the need for them to call or email.

IMPROVED KNOWLEDGE.

The team gained improved knowledge of the users pain points and a true insight into the larger market place.This new found knowledge will help drive the website forward.

Clear information.

The new website provides both users and administrators a full view of all the information they require for each area of the site.

Sustaining and strengthening communities.

Services provided

  • HTML5/CSS
  • Design
  • Content management
  • JavaScript
  • Template build
  • Fully responsive

Visit the site

www.ekdha.co.uk

More work