The UX/UI journey at Edgefolio
started here
Moving from development to UX/UI design. I decided it was the right moment to pursue my dream and to take the time to learn new skills on UX / UI design.
Short after the course finished, I started to look for the opportunity that will allow me to enter in the UX Design field, I was amazed by the response and I was willing to take anything that puts me straight on the journey, any thing and I meant anything.
An opportunity came to my door and how could I miss it. I joined Edgefolio a small Fintech start up four years old set up in Norway by four friends.
What is Edgefolio
Is a platform for investors where they can access and look at all the hedge funds on the market and are able to engage with Fund Managers throughout a tailored portal
Product 1: Fundportal
It is a portal lightweight CRM for Fund Managers and their team to manage contacts, mailing campaigns, share information securely, a document repository and an analysis tool.
Product 2: Researchedge
It is an analytical tool, a company can connect its own database and analyse a fund’s performance this is mainly used by internal teams within a company.
Service: White label
A combination of Fundportal and Reserachedge, a Portal with a powerful analytical tool plugged to various data sources, it is mainly used by bigger corporates such as banks.
Wonderful start, how exciting was the idea to finally start my the new journey as a UX / UI Designer. This was the beginning of my dream becoming true. Where creativity is main tool, indeed I was challenged in many ways, and I began to learn a new set of skills, such as trust, improvise and believe as the reality was a bit less colourful. I was the only designer and didn’t have experience, so here are the challenges I began to face below
Branding
The problem
There was no identity, no palette, no voice, no tone and personality, so when my next challenge was already aligned such as the website design, the problem would be even bigger.
I must admit it took me a week to put my head straight as I was even more confused, as the designs and sketches i had produced didn't have life (colours).
Another challenge began to raise, none of my team members knew all the tasks i needed to do in order to achieve my goals, therefore the sketches presented where no where near the expectations but a website was instead in only 3 days. I then realised that there was a educational gap of what a Designer is to do and a process in place.
The process
Right, so how do I solve this? I managed to step out of the box and began to look for branding articles,
in order to help me start doing my job as a designer and more importantly help the company establish an identity.
Based on the following articles ‘How to tell a story’, Lightweight branding exercise and ‘The branding process’ I prepared a basic branding session runned in two days, so that we all together as a team (8 members) could define the company’s identity.
Day 1
Starting with an icebreaker 2 truths and 1 lie then followed the format below:
1. Brainstorming Attributes - time 10 mins
2. Yeses and Nos - time 20 mins
3. Surfacing Patterns - time 30 mins
Goal - The core idea was to identify:
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Mission
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Values
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Personality
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Tone / message
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Product name definition
Brainstorming Attributes
During the process, I asked my team to write down on posters notes a list all the attributes about Edgefolio, whoever in order to guide the exercise it was important help clarify the following:
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Separate the brand from the product.
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Separate the brand from the customer
Yeses and Nos
This session was interesting as it allowed each members to participate and share their thoughts about the attributes on the board, selecting them and grouping them into a mission, values, personality, tone and message. The exercise made each member think carefully
Surfacing Patterns
A personality that began to stand out through the patterns identified on the board and i began group them and at the end of the exercise we have pretty much identified our goals for this session.
Day 2
Goal - identify our Design colour pallet
In order to identify the colours for our brand I referred to the following articles Digital design trends and Colour schemes for inspiration.
I put together a list of pallets and explained the emotions linked to each one, so i could guide the team on making the brand colours.
Time was against me and work was beginning to accumulate as well as pressure to deliver, I set up a survey on branding and invited the team to participate.
The results were collected and put them together as our defined Design guide. Somehow I felt relieved and knew, here was my starting point, I could begin with design. Next was the the parallel problem to this a website.
The key deliverables
Edgefolio design guidelines
