1. Experience Strategy

The Problem

Health & Love is a project that had been largely untouched for the past few years, so everything about it was very outdated. The website’s two main functions are to provide articles on varying sexual health topics and to provide a place where people can ask unanswered questions to Health & Love's character called Dr. Love. Thus, the main goal was to define a more attractive and familiar web experience for young Cambodians.

Competitive Analysis

Currently, finding information about sexual health is difficult in Cambodia because of the lack of websites on this topic and the culture discourages talking about sexual topics in the open. The few websites that did offer it were news sites that have a section on “Love/Relationships." Therefore, to see how sexual health information was conveyed effectively to teens, I had to reference some western and Korean websites.

Structuring the Website

Next, to gain insight on how to effectively structure the information on the website, I requested statistics of the current website to see which pages were most frequently accessed. The most popular pages were Contraception and Asking Dr. Love.

Wireframes

Based on my research, I created wireframes for both desktop and mobile. More Cambodians have smartphones than laptops, so designing responsively was even more essential.

2. User research for Branding

Cultural Research

My original intention was to go straight to designing the website, but since the logo is the main face of the website and the brand, I had to redesign it first to create a modern website UI that goes with it. My first step was to get to know cultural trends of younger Cambodians by going to markets, people watching in cafes, and speaking to some locals.
My research revealed that Cambodian young adults were very much into Korean culture (K-pop, K-dramas), streetwear brands such as Supreme and Adidas, and the cutesy-ness often found in some Asian brands.

Focus Group Research

After creating several versions of the logo and Dr. Love, I led two 1 hour long session focus groups (5 Cambodian college students per group) to gain insight on design direction. I made some adjustments based on my findings from the first group before meeting with the second group.

Final Logo and Dr. Love Character

The focus groups gave me invaluable feedback and suggestions to better cater the final version of the logo and Dr. Love character to the target user group.

3. Developing the Website

Website UI Design

The focus groups revealed that Cambodian young adults prefer a content-first, minimalistic website. I kept elements to a minimum and emphasized the pictures.

Developing the Website for Testing

I am currently developing the website using CraftCMS Pro on a staging site in preparation to be tested with users. Ideally, users would have been brought in to the office to test with wireframes, but my time in Cambodia only allowed enough time to organize two focus groups before I started developing the website. However, the team decided it would be best to have the staging website developed first so that staff members can pull up the website to test when visiting families during outreach.

Reflections

Rebranding the logo and character was very challenging since I was designing for people with a completely different culture. In the end, I had played around with over 20 different ideas and variations of the branding. Thus, user research was key to this project in shedding light on how people think and helping direct my design.
Lastly, I really enjoyed learning and developing with CraftCMS thanks to its flexibility, powerful underlying framework, and great admin UI.