Bell
site redesign
Year: 2018 - 19
Year: 2018 - 19
Role: UX, Strategy, Research, Content
Reimagining the website experience for a leading helicopter brand: bolstering the Bell customer experience with personalized, interactive experiences, while showcasing the company’s cutting edge technology and innovation.
Design of the website encompassed Discovery and initial user research, as well as content strategy, followed by UX and visual design.
The challenge
project brief
Tell Bell’s story as a pioneer of vertical lift innovation. Reach their diverse audience, and elevate their cutting edge technology and innovation.
Discovery
research and strategy
We partnered with Bell to co-create a shared vision of the experience. We spoke with Bell stakeholders, performed a content audit, gathered inspiration from their competitive landscape, and heuristically reviewed their current site.
Surveying the current competitive landscape.
Heuristically auditing the current site experience.
User research
interviews and insights
In understanding the wide landscape of Bell’s audience, we spoke with a variety of user types and synthesized key themes from our conversations. We then developed archetypes in order to distill behavioral patterns and map ideal user journeys for our experience.
Interviewing Bell customers, operators, employees, and service personnel.
Determining key behavioral archetypes for Bell's audience.
With our archetypes in mind, we mapped in-depth user journeys for each behavior.
Strategic pillars
defining our vision
We identified three key areas of focus that guided our conversations throughout our discovery phase and shaped the design of our site.
Workshopping with Bell in order to align on our strategic pillars and site architecture.
Our strategic pillars captured our user archetypes' needs, as well as business goals.
UX framework
site architecture and navigation
Our experience framework outlined our sitemap and navigation, defined key templates and requirements, acted as a blueprint for our engagement, and gave the team a clear picture of the site for our design phase.
We simplified Bell’s architecture and navigation, accounted for our key user archetypes, and delivered a strong brand statement to underscore their values.
The experience framework included a detailed list of templates and requirements, information architecture, and navigation paradigms for our site.
Ideation
brainstorming and sketching
With our experience framework, we identified four core sections for our site: Products, Company, Support, and Experience. This exercise simplified Bell’s architecture, accounted for each audience archetype, and delivered a mission driven brand statement. We then ideated around each of these core sections, sketching and establishing a module library in order to atomically structure sections and pages and maintain consistency throughout the site.
Starting sprints with group brainstorms, our UX team worked with content strategy to set the tone and narrative for each section and template.
Products
experience design
Bell’s product experience started out with a separation between military, commercial, and innovation products. We sought to break down that bifurcation by consolidating Bell’s product taxonomy and allowing visitors to see the entirety of Bell’s fleet in one accessible location. We also brought features to life by crafting a narrative around each product, showcasing the excitement and romanticism of the world of flight.
Company
experience design
Bell is a pioneering force, with a culture of innovation, and a long, rich history of firsts. We wanted to create a captivating timeline experience to feature Bell’s extensive library of historical artifacts, as well as an immersive, modular homepage to feature Bell’s mission, cutting edge technology, and latest achievements.
Support
experience design
Our key goal of the support section design was to reorganize the contact support map, establishing proper channels through which to reach Bell’s global team. We worked closely with our partners at Bell to develop a support taxonomy and align with backend efforts in restructuring modes of communication.
Experience
experience design
As part of our strategic initiative to elevate technology at Bell, we developed content categories specific to innovation, as well as dedicated, immersive detail pages for innovation products. For detail pages in particular, we focused on telling the story of the product, using captivating imagery and movement to illustrate features and technical details.
Final product
design and launch
Ultimately with our redesign, we focused on capturing the Bell magnetism, elevating innovation in flight, and embodying the future of vertical lift.
Allie Teixeira Riggs
Allie Teixeira Riggs
Allie Teixeira Riggs
Design Researcher and Product Designer
Design Researcher and Product Designer
Design Researcher and Product Designer
Design Researcher and Product Designer