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Dedoose, a web-based app trusted by educators, medical professionals, UX researchers, and government agencies, needed a fresh creative direction to better reflect its reputation and attract new users. I partnered with Business Development and Digital Communications to modernize the brand and website, ultimately improving user experience, brand perception, and affinity.
Despite its credibility among researchers, Dedoose’s digital presence didn’t reflect its influence. The marketing website felt dated, the brand lacked consistency, and teams struggled with updating and maintaining content. My goal was to deliver a modern, consistent brand system and website that stood shoulder-to-shoulder with leading SaaS competitors in user research software.
Refining the brand guidelines was my first step in reshaping the corporate identity. The existing style guide, last updated in 2010, lacked critical details. I redesigned the document, added guidance on brand usage, co-branding, photography, and graphics, and refreshed the color palette to be more harmonious and accessible.
With the brand guidelines complete, my biggest undertaking was redesigning Dedoose.com. Beyond modernizing visuals, the goal was to overhaul the user experience with a focus on customer acquisition and stronger brand perception. The result was a bright, modern site on par with leading SaaS competitors, designed to both engage users and provide measurable KPIs for long-term performance.
I began the project by reviewing comparative websites, both within and outside the field of data research. Taking a look at the competitive landscape helps to identify shared conventions, discover opportunities for innovation, and note strengths and weaknesses that could enhance the new site.
I chose to hone in on websites that featured well designed interfaces, engaging user experiences and targeted messaging within the related fields of user research, software development and qualitative data analysis and mixed methods research.
After completing the competitive review, I compiled my recommendations and presented them to the team for buy-in. Ranging in level of effort, these (10) insights, would collectively improve the overall usability of the new site.
I then conducted an audit of the existing site content, compiling the information into a Google spreadsheet, where I was able to categorize the content by type, purpose, format, behavior and SEO/meta data. This exercise helps to identify content gaps, duplicates, and areas of improvement that are essential to the creation of the sitemap and wireframes.
After sitemap approval, I began working on the wireframes in Figma. However, due to Figma's limited interactivity options, I brought the wireframe elements into Axure, where I built a clickable prototype. The Axure prototype gave the team a more realistic look at how visitors may interact with the site, while affording us a central place to collaborate and align on site goals and content placement.
Having agreed on a design direction, the next step was to start building a style library in Figma. Comprised of UI elements (color variants, icons, and text styles) and reusable components (buttons, navigation modules, content cards, accordions, etc.) this cohesive design system would be leveraged to create the page mockups.
With the wireframes as a base, I used Figma to design the main pages of the site, optimizing the UI elements and components for easy export and efficient build in Webflow. As a part of this exercise, I also created custom branded graphics that would support the platform features content, while complimenting the site's new modern and approachable creative direction.
Once the page mockups were approved, I then started building the website in Webflow. My intention was to make it easy for the team to populate/maintain content with as little friction as possible. As such, I did the following:
Being favorable to team members who are not Webflow proficient, the majority of content updates were setup to be made via collection items.
Automatically importing color variables, padding/spacing values and font styles from Figma helped impart fundamental uniformity into the design system.
By identifying consistencies among Figma sections and modules, I was able to quickly create class styles and reusable components to expedite the page build.
Once the site was built and handed off to the team for content population, I setup a wiki in Notion, authoring comprehensive documentation that the team could reference. I also created video tutorials, ensuring the team was well equipped to maintain the site thereafter.
In support of the brand enhancement strategy and on the heels of the new creative direction of the website, it was imperative that all brand collateral be in alignment. As such, I refreshed the look and feel of these assets, which include: stationery, business cards, PowerPoint templates, digital ads and email templates.
To support the Digital Communications team, I produced new YouTube intro and outro animations. Starting with Figma storyboards, I optimized vector assets, then used Adobe Animate to apply motion. Paired with stock music and edited in iMovie, the clips conveyed the brand’s lively new aesthetic in an engaging, repeatable format.
