While my title was Marketing Associate, Baffle was a startup with less than 25 employees which meant I wore multiple hats. Since Brian knew I had a background in graphic design and he was the whole design team, he pulled me in to help with the website redesign. We started by talking about why we were redesigning the site, who the target audience was, and how I could help. He had already had branding down so I jumped in on user experience and icon design.
I started by reviewing what Brian had already worked on and used that to dive head first into design research. I had only been a part of the Baffle team for 6 months as a consultant by this point and was unfamiliar with most of the verbiage that came with working for a cloud software startup in the cybersecurity space. Dictionary and Google Search were my best friends during this process as I was learning about the industry while researching competitors. They were also the best tools to guide me while designing the icons.
First came some sketches with the goal of getting as many different layout designs as possible for each page type needed. From here, I began working on the low fidelity mockups in Sketch and connected with Brian on my progress which led to a few designs being approved to move forward with. Once starting the high fidelity mockups, a lot of the focus went into the homepage as 99% of users land on baffle.io or end up on the homepage during their visit.
The CEO and VP of Marketing both wanted a way for us to push top content to users to increase article views, content downloads, and ultimately, move them through our sales funnel. With this as the top priority besides the CTA that needed to be above the fold, I landed on a carousel with a hidden drawer which would allow for a minimum of four content pieces to be front and center.