Equip is one of the top superannuation companies in Australia, managing over $700 million worth of investments for members working across a wide range of Australian industry sectors. The fund provides strong investment performance and has been a reliable provider of retirement benefits for over 80 years.
Hardhat won the work through a competitive pitch which I was very closely involved in. The brief was to completely redesign and build the new Equip website, with a strong focus on best practice UX. It was my job as the lead UX /UI designer on the job, to conduct an in depth analysis of the competitive landscape and document key user groups to then build personas which would form the basis of the redesign.
As Equip has such a wide range of customers, the research process was extensive and the site needed to solve a lot of issues for a lot of different socioeconomic groups. The key problem to solve for this site was information sorting, users really needed to be able to find what they were looking for in the quickest time possible.
The wireframing component was a real learning process for the client, as they hadn't worked with Axure in the past. Having recently implemented a client channel on the program 'Slack' this made for great discussion around usability and easy communication back and forth with the client so we could all come to the best resolution.
As part of the redesign process, I was able to take the print style guide and give it new life on the web - creating a whole new look and feel for the brand with a focus on candid, soft focus imagery with vibrancy, moving away from highly saturated staged imagery of the past.
This was the first project where Hardhat had used an external web development agency, as the site was built on the Kentico platform, so I learnt a lot about collaborating with external teams. The site is due for deployment in August 2016.