Co-op team project with 4 other designers at WSIB Innovation Lab
Product Manager and UX Designer
Feb 2023 - Apr 2023
(3 months)
As a UX Designer co-op student at the WSIB innovation lab, I led a team of 4 other designers in planning and executing the lab rebrand project to best convey the lab’s values and create a more dynamic, timeless and sustainable brand identity.
A chosen style, newly defined typography, iconography and colour palette, website redesigns, branding assets including slide deck templates and a revamped lab logo.
.svg)
To start off the project, as the product manager, I worked with the rest of the team to create a project plan which included our overall goals, timelines and project outcome deliverables. Every week we also had meetings with our primary stakeholders; the lab leads, to discuss the project progress, share work and obtain feedback. I further scoped out the project incorporating feedback cycles in the plan, created high level sprint goals and tickets, and facilitated meetings and communication with the leads.
.png)
The first step of the rebranding process was conducting an audit and looking into current systems used within the lab as well as corporate WSIB. Here, larger pieces such as website and slide decks down to details such as typography, iconography and colours were all evaluated to identify areas of improvement and understand the present brand presence.
Connect the lab rebrand to corporate WSIB while setting an example of what the corporate side could evolve to in the future
One main focus of this rebranding project was also the current lab website with it’s main users consisting of prospective co-op students as well as potential corporate WSIB workers learning more about the lab. To better account for user feedback, a lab-wide survey was sent to both current and past two lab co-op cohorts to understand their views on the current innovation lab website and their perception of the lab when initially applying for their co-op positions.
On top of audits, a competitive analysis was also carried to understand design trends, and information present in other insurance boards and lab websites. Here the overall brand, website design and the steps needed to complete the task of “submitting a claim” were compared. This information was used as inspiration for future designs as well as acted as a base to highlight standard content types present in similar sites.
The first step to the rebranding was choosing a style. To do this we first individually explored the current design trends while also referring to the styles uncovered through our competitive analysis. Some of the major options explored included neobrutalism, minimalism, pastel, metamodernism and bauhaus picasso.
There were lots of fun themes and ideas to choose from, but one thing that guided us in making a final decision was aligning our choice to the values that we wanted the lab to convey.
After feedback from the leads and the rest of lab team, and after thinking about what tied in most with our outlined values, we finalized a more picasso style, which also blended in some aspects of ideas explored in the metamodern and pastel styles. This was something that checked all of the boxes of being creative/fun, experimentative/new whilst also curating a friendly and welcoming vibe. It was also the style that wasn't necessarily "trendy" and could instead feel timeless.
.svg)
Overall, we wanted to continue showcasing the playful yet professional sides of the lab, designing something that is clean and innovative.
While exploring styles, we also looked into the basic elements that made up the style; the typography, iconography and colours (T/I/C). We based these not only on what suited the style the most, but tried to tie it in back to corporate WSIB colours while meeting the requirement of not diverting too much from what we already had for the lab and creating something timeless.
.png)
.png)
After feedback from leads, as well as voting conducted with the rest of the lab team, the following was decided:
Something casual but also professional
A mix of serif and sans-serif options that tie in with corporate fonts while being applicable for various use cases such as documents, website and slides.
.svg)
.svg)
Line-awesome -> Material icons
Material icons which has a more full fledged pack with options for filled and two toned icons, making it more versatile than the previous line-awesome pack.
Something that matches the established style but also ties to corporate
Incorporating similar colours found in the corporate branding but a more muted version to match the picasso style. Some other improvements include a better definition of use cases as well as ensuring the new shades meet accessibility standards. Lastly, we also explored a dark mode pallete, extending upon the original light mode only designs.
.svg)
After finalizing the general styling and T/I/C of the lab branding, one of the biggest deliverables was creating new website mockups that fit the lab’s new look. This was an iterative process, with regular feedback from leads and internal team voting to help with design decisions.
Including a new projects and about page based on survey feedback to include more information about lab values and work being done for prospective coops to learn about
.png)
Improving the teams page’s internal navigation and upkeep by omitting individual pages for each coop and keeping information about full time staff (leads)
.png)
Considering sustainability of the site and exploring no-code solutions such as webflow and framer for potential implementation of the designs
.svg)
Along with the mockups some of the other main outcomes included creating some branding assets such as slides as well as considering new logo designs to match the new style.
After outlining basic spacing guidelines, the slides designs were created considering both a dark and light mode with basic picasso and bauhaus shapes used for enhancements to tie it in with the website.
The previous logo included a chameleon to showcase the adaptability and growth of the lab. The survey showed that not everyone was clear of this message and so it was decided to change the focus of the logo to something more simple and scalable that also ties in to the chosen picasso style.
An all black corporate version of the logo that spells out innovation lab, which after animation, has the “lab” turn into shapes used as motifs to represent each team composing the lab.
Overall meaning: The teams represent the building blocks of the lab that come together to complete it.
.svg)
This project was my first time balancing the role of a PM alongside working as a designer in the team. Trying to accomplish tasks for both these roles was difficult at first but gradually became easier after learning to properly organize my time and delegate tasks. Some other learnings included:
Not to rush into things - The design team almost went directly into choosing our rebrand colour palette without properly exploring various themes and styles thoroughly and locking one in. After getting feedback from the leads, we realised we were rushing into things and should instead spend more time to uncover more ideas to avoid missing out on better solutions.
Not everything goes to plan - Although we had a rough timeline for the work that needed to be completed, due to higher priorities for other projects coming in to the lab as well as more iterations on the work being done, we weren't able to spend as much time as needed to wrap-up everything for this project. This resulted in shifting timelines and an emphasis on documentation required for future co-ops to carry forward the rebrand work.
Due to the time constraints and continuous evolution of the project timelines, there were still deliverables left to be completed. Some of these next steps include -
.svg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}