5 MIN READ
Saratoga Capital, Inc.
THE PURPOSE
CONTEXT
Saratoga Capital, Inc. is a privately-held real estate management company on the West Coast offering apartment home residences, amenities and customer service for renters throughout 35 locations.
OBJECTIVE
Redesign Saratoga Capital’s website and design system to increase leasing activity across their portfolio and allow lenders to evaluate their upcoming developments for potential loans.
DURATION
March 2023-Present
MY ROLE
Digital design, web design, content organization, marketing
TOOLS USED
Figma, Google Workspace
THE TEAM
Lead designer
STAKEHOLDER INSIGHTS
Stakeholders expressed their need for a complete design refresh. Their main goal was to increase marketing capabilities to current/potential residents in hopes of gaining long-term retention rates. However, stakeholders were weary of making too many updates for fear that they might cause unwanted attention, as they enjoy keeping a low profile in the marketplace.
DISCOVERING PAIN POINTS
Through a comprehensive heuristic evaluation, I gained insight into our areas of concern. This allowed me to familiarize myself with the existing website's framework and identify any elements that could be retained and repurposed for the redesign.
GUIDING OBJECTIVES
01
Create a development portion of the site to showcase upcoming projects
02
Generate a cohesive design system and style guide.
03
Reorganize content to mirror navigation flow.
EVALUATION OF THE MARKETPLACE
After engaging in discussions with stakeholders, the following phase involved assessing the prevailing market landscape and analyzing our competitors to identify areas in need of enhancement. Comparable firms exhibited straightforward designs and regularly refreshed web pages, featuring projects from the present year. Exploring diverse websites proved instrumental in pinpointing our pain points and identifying areas requiring refinement.
MAIN PAIN POINTS
Visibility & organization
Lacking cohesive design
Behind on current updates and company news
Missing links
EARLY DESIGN PROCESS
Being inherently visual, I find that creating diverse organizational layouts in Figma is the optimal approach to establishing my course in the initial design stage. Drawing from the current site's context, I integrated it into my low-fidelity prototype, aiding in my comprehension of the necessary visuals for guiding users across each page.
GUIDING INQUIRIES
What elements would offer the most immediate value to users on each page?
What are the primary reasons users visit this site?
Which visuals would effectively underscore the company's mission and overarching objectives?
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
The current navigation system lacked comprehensive representation of the company's services. To address this, I introduced additional navigation titles to broaden the user's browsing options and enhanced the style to better reflect the brand identity.
The navigation cards are presented as depicted, eliminating the necessity for dropdown menus. Stakeholders appreciated the simplicity and clear messaging of each page on the site, making elaborate dropdowns unnecessary.
IDEATION CHALLENGES + ITERATIONS
Once I believed I had created a strong structure and subsequent content of each webpage, I revisited the stakeholders to ensure alignment with their vision and present any new ideas I had uncovered along the way, such as adding new pages and navigation items. While my proposals for expansion received positive feedback, there was resistance regarding the inclusion of an "our team" section.
I believed it was crucial to feature this page to provide prospective tenants with a glimpse of the faces behind the company. However, stakeholders expressed concerns about the frequent internal employment changes, fearing it would necessitate frequent website updates.
In response, I proposed including only leadership roles on this page. This maintained a sense of familiarity with the company while reducing the burden of website updates due to employment turnover.
LO-FI
HI-FI
STYLE GUIDE & DESIGN SYSTEM
NEXT STEPS
I presented my research findings and the final prototype with the stakeholders at Saratoga Capital, and received highly positive feedback from their leadership team. Aside from minor adjustments to align the site's content with their current market-specific strategies, they expressed admiration for the design and overall simplicity of the website.
I am now working on making the website available in mobile view so anyone can view on the go.
Stakeholders wanted to see tenant portal added to navigation system so current tenants could easily find their accounts.
Finding a local developer to implement designs to URL.
MOBILE PROTOTYPE
TENANT PORTAL
CODING
INTERACTION NOTES & ERROR STATES
OTHER PROJECTS
Ski Like a Girl
Curating a fun and empowering digital experience to promote brand mission and growth.
Heart of the Valley
A website redesign focused on enhancing visual design and accessibility for its users.
