MXB Agency
An MXB Agency Project
Timeline28 weeks
Services
- UX Research
- UI/UX Design
- Art Direction
- Project Management
MXB is an award winning creative digital marketing agency based in Belfast, with 30+ years of expertise in design, strategy, and brand growth. Since joining MXB in 2019, there have been several attempts at re-vamping the agency website. My goal was to design and develop an elevated user experience through research and collaboration that better encapsulates the agency’s culture and capabilities.
Research ✎
The discovery phase of this project involved workshopping with the wider team to identify key problems with the current website. We carried out a UX audit to understand the pain points and areas of improvement in the live experience of the site. As we figured out the pain points, the next step in the process was to decide the mood and expectations for the website. Once we aligned on these sentiments, I began looking at the landscape of competitors to find commonalities amongst user expectations. This inspiration helped to inform our information hierarchy.
Ideation ⌲
The early stage of creating the website involved the preparation of the framework; this included creating a site plan, layout, navigation design, placement of page links, and a call to action. After all those rounds of discussion, I began to sketch out wireframes. I worked on the layout and orientation of each webpage. This helped to solidify the user flow and journey for the website, giving us a skeleton to build upon. These sketches came to life, from pen and paper to high fidelity wireframes. From there, we created a style-scape with the aim of aligning on use of typography, colour and other UI elements.
Visual Language ✎
Having completed an update to the look and feel of our internal and client facing communications at the end of 2023, my goal was to extend this treatment to our web presence. As Golden Krishna said in his recent book, the most successful UI is the least UI possible. The minimal UI that gets out of the user’s way and that’s grounded in core, low-level design goals is the most successful. A portfolio site should embody the very principles it sells; clarity, simplicity, and thoughtful design. But often I'd seen over-designed interfaces, unclear navigation, or bloated visuals that distract rather than communicate. Simplicity isn’t about being minimal for the sake of aesthetics, it’s about letting the work speak, fast and effectively.
Design⌁Prototype
Building a high fidelity prototype on Adobe XD allowed the wider team to really get a sense of how the final developed site would feel. During this phase we worked on changes iteratively, as a collective. We worked on the copy, fleshing out our case studies, communicating our service offerings and agency culture.
Our developer, David Moen, then began to build out the site, learning a new language, React, along the way.
Result ✌︎
Given the issues with the previous site; such as presenting as a sporadically updated blog, using atypical language to describe site sections and a lack of storytelling with strong case studies, I believe the newly launched site serves a better experience for all users. Whether it’s a potential client, current client, or perhaps, a job seeker, the site certainly delivers far beyond that of the previous iteration. Another bonus positive has been the increased success in pitch work, using the newly established case studies as a baseline, often winning 5-6 figure work as a result. Sincere thanks to Karen Carmichael and Barry McCabe for trusting me with this one. ✌︎