Method

In the swiftly changing landscape of the cyber security sector, our organization had to delineate a distinct identity that could shine amidst the rising competition. The emergence of low-cost certifications by competitors and our desire to expand into newer markets necessitated us to not only maintain our stature as a certifying body, but also to embrace a more comprehensive role. We were faced with two challenges: one, we needed to upgrade the legacy platform hosting our website, and two, we needed to rejuvenate our brand, which would hopefully resonate better with our evolving customer base and market dynamics.

Challenge: The main challenge in our organization was member retention and engagement. Our organization was largely perceived as a provider of a single service while all the other benefits and services we had were overlooked. As a result, members didn’t feel the need to continue interacting with us past the point of keeping their certifications with us active. We wanted a change to keep our company competitive in the marketplace.

Questions: How can we bridge the gap between our current perception and our desired positioning as a certification body, advocacy organization, and a membership-oriented institution?

Goals:

1) To reposition our brand beyond being just a certifying company, showcasing our additional offerings and establishing ourselves as thought leaders in addressing the cybersecurity workforce gap.

2) To design and create a platform for cybersecurity professionals, empowering newcomers to the field and the organizations relying on their expertise.

3) To enhance membership retention.

4) To boost brand recognition and familiarity within the academic and workforce markets.

Demographics: Students and working professionals interested in cybersecurity, professional organizations invested in cybersecurity

Project Scope & Research

The project kick-started with defining KPIs, business objectives, and the framework through a series of cross-functional meetings.

We collaborated closely with the agency to prioritize a list of hypotheses on what our problem areas were and recommendations on how we can address them, aligning them with our organizational goals and those of our audience. Afterwards, we assessed their feasibility. This list guided us in identifying areas that required revamping.

Research played a pivotal role during the early phases of the project. In partnership with a third-party design agency, we conducted quantitative surveys and qualitative user interviews. I contributed to the design of the questions, delving into users' career trajectories and evaluating our product performance. Further, I led an independent research study to understand the career aspirations and pathways of one of our potential new audiences. Based on the collected data, we created new user personas.

Design Process & Information Architecture

After we established the full scope and areas for opportunity, we started off the design work with a revamping of our site architecture. We had received feedback on our site being difficult to manage from both stakeholders and customers. We held several meetings to address these pain points and brainstorm on how we can improve. This was to ensure users could find relevant content more intuitively.

Our team then undertook several design sprints to visualize the final components and design system. A comprehensive list of all website pages was created, followed by decisions on which pages required redesigning, removing, redirecting, or automating.

I engaged with relevant stakeholders to design the first round of pages for MVP1. Product strategy was at the forefront when it came to this process. Some of the questions I would ask myself throughout the design process were:

Can we scale with this design? How is it addressing the pain points we have identified earlier? Is there another way we can go about this that is more beneficial? What design projects should be pushed off to MVP 2? What can we realistically accomplish in such a short time frame? Is the copy on this page portraying the right message?

I had to hold meetings with multiple departments to showcase my creations and explain my design decisions.

To ensure user concerns were addressed post-launch, I created a list of items we needed to review and tests we needed to conduct. It was crucial to conduct research to measure the impact of these changes on our audience and organization. A roadmap was established for the design of pages not included in the MVP 1. A significant effort was made towards achieving Section 508 compliance, ensuring our pages were accessible.

Due to time constraints, some pages couldn’t be designed the way I wanted. We had to push that design goal to later MVPs. Another limitation was our inability to perform tree testing due to limited time when we went through the process of redesigning the navigation. The tree test would’ve provided insight into our users' mental models and how they naturally group content.