EF Tours Canada Discovery & Build
OVERVIEW
Apply Digital partnered with EF Tours Canada for a Discovery and Build engagement. The goals of the engagement were to assess the design opportunities and technical feasibility of migrating and redesigning their site onto a new tech stack. Subsequently. we would migrate and launch the new site featuring a rebrand, new design system, and updated user experience and content strategy.
TIMELINE
- 4 Week Discovery
- 4 Week Design & Build
TEAM
- UX Lead + Senior UX (me)
- UI Designer
- Senior Product Specialist
- Senior SE
- Content Author
- Senior Project Manager
- EF Tours teams
ACTIVITIES
- Documentation and asset review
- Stakeholder interviews
- Competitive analysis
- Experience audit
- Jobs to be Done analysis
- Content audit and mapping
- User research and usability testing
- High-fidelity designs
DELIVERABLES
- Information Architecture maps
- Design Memo and Summary of Findings
- Wireframes, mockups, and prototypes
- User research report
- Content authoring materials
EF TOURS CANADA
Education First Tours Canada (a subsidiary of the global Education First company), specializes in providing educational travel experiences for students and educators in Canada. They offer a wide range of trips that combine cultural immersion with hands-on learning, aiming to build global awareness and understanding among participants.
DISCOVERY PHASE
The core deliverables for our discovery phase centered around an extensively detailed design report and final presentation. The goal of the design report was to document our experience audit of EF Tours Canada's site while uncovering design opportunities available if they were to migrate and redesign the site.
In the report, we highlight our desk research, competitive analysis, experience audit, information architecture maps, and Jobs to be done evaluation of the site.
KEY OPPORTUNITY
From our research activities and report, we identified the key user problem and opportunity area for EF Tours Canada. We highlighted how that EF’s existing site did not effectively communicate to their users what their products are, who they are for, and provide answers for questions users may have.
This gap in UX and content strategy was a pain point and missed opportunity to communicate the aspirational and tangible value of educational travel for Teachers, Parents, and Students.
CONCEPT DEMO
After presenting our research finding and concept proposals, we moved forward with the client to help deliver this new, persona-driven user experience. In addition to refreshing and migrating the site with a new brand and design system, we also created several new pages to help address the content gaps our Personas were desiring.
DESIGN & BUILD
Following up from our concept designs, UX and UI partnered together to rapidly mockup the new site which would feature a brand new design system and brand expression. Additionally, UX partnered closely with Content Strategy and the client to help define and create all the new content and web pages we would need to address the content gaps for each of the site's personas.
TESTING PHASE
After mocking up the site, we entered the user testing phase. I created a User Research plan which outlined our research goals, methodologies, user recruitment, and testing procedures.
The goals for testing were to evaluate the usability and wayfinding of the newly redesigned site in performing primary user tasks, assess the content comprehension and messaging of the redesigned site for teachers and parents, and lastly assess the new visual design direction.
DESIGN SAMPLES
Looking back at the 2 month engagement, it was incredible how much was achieved in such short time. Much of this is due to my small but mighty team working closely and efficiently. The collaboration between UX, UI, and Content helped rapidly speed up our design process as we were able to jump from content hierarchies to full mockups in a matter of days. Many thanks to the client as well, who trusted us as experts and collaborated with us to help bring their vision to life.
