Sitting Down with the NOAH Team: NOAH's Website Redesign
We sat down with Jonathan and Brianna from the NOAH team to learn more about the redesign of our website. Here's what they had to say.
Index
A product is nothing without good design. The nuts and bolts, the organs, the skeleton; they're all nothing without skin or casing to make them look pretty. A product can have great content and solve a need, but users will turn away if the design is poor.
This is especially true for websites. A website is a product that needs to be designed well to be successful. It needs to be easy to use, navigate, and understand. In addition, it needs to look good.
NOAH's new website design does all of these things. We redesigned the NOAH website with the user in mind, architecting a site that is easy to use, navigate, and understand. The new design is also beautiful, with a clean and modern aesthetic. We sat down with the team behind the redesign to learn more about the process and the thinking behind the new NOAH website. Jonathan, one of our graphic designers, and Brianna, NOAH's Chief of Staff, were eager to share their thoughts:
Why did we decide to redo the website?
Brianna mentioned that the company was still in pre-release after the first rebrand in January. People were still getting acquainted with the NOAH brand, and while it sufficed at the time, we knew that as NOAH progressed and changed, so would our website need to change and grow with us. Of course, the NOAH team is acquainted with the brand, but a website is a company's public face to the world, and we wanted to make sure that our public face was one that we were proud of.
From Jonathan's side of things, while the website was bold, aspects were illegible, and the overall aesthetic was not as clean as it could be. He saw an opportunity to make the site more user-friendly and visually appealing. As NOAH grew, we refined our brand and messaging with it. Confidence, trust, and accessibility cemented as our core values, and we knew our website needed to reflect those values.
Why did we go for this color palette?
Inspirationally, as many other brands do, we decided to go for a more streamlined look that Apple has really popularized recently. Brianna said that the focus on white space with pops of color keeps the eye moving and allows users to quickly find what they're looking for without feeling overwhelmed by the content.
More granularly, Jonathan said that orange is a cheerful, social color cross-culturally. Jonathan wanted to ensure that the website gave off the same welcoming, friendly vibes that NOAH wants to radiate. Orange is also an attention-grabbing color that primes the senses, an important aspect when we want users to take in and retain information from our site.
What was the process behind creating a new website, and how long did it take to get to this version?
Brianna said that collaboration is critical. She said that Jonathan was the brainchild of design ideas, prolific in his creativity. With dozens of ideas, Brianna worked with Jonathan to fine-tune, nitpick, and iterate on the design until they arrived at the final product. The process took about two months to complete.
Jonathan said that due to the nature of a startup environment, the team had to start with the landing page and work from there. It's a much more daunting task as a designer to essentially start from design ground zero, but building out the website one section at a time allowed for a much more manageable and iterative process.
What was most important when designing the new website? What feedback did we take into consideration?
As Chief of Staff, Brianna stressed the importance of communication throughout the NOAH team and with our user base. When creating a website, you must communicate with your users, not just design for them. While many iterations looked beautiful and bold, we failed to communicate what we strive for at NOAH. We can have a website that looks like a million bucks, but if we're unclear about what we do or how we help our users, the website is moot.
Jonathan said that NOAH's brand took center stage regarding the website's design. We workshopped the brand earlier in the year, confirmed our brand values and attributes, and affirmed our company intentions. From there, we had a much clearer idea of what our website needed to look like and how we wanted users to feel when they visited it. Simplicity, accessibility, trustworthiness, and confidence are our core values, so working from there, Jonathan said he was able to design a website that accurately reflects NOAH.
What brand guidelines did we refer to during the redesign?
Brianna sees the NOAH brand as a person, a cool friend you have who happens to have the most effortless style, a timeless taste in music, and a passion for minimalism. NOAH feels like someone you can rely on but also knows how to have a good time.
Jonathan spoke to branding guidelines being a moving target. While we have specific guidelines that we refer to, he said that it's essential for the team to experiment a little and push boundaries to see what works and what doesn't. We want our brand to be fluid and ever-evolving, so we must be open to trying new things.
What feeling did we want to communicate?
Both Brianna and Jonathan want people to feel like NOAH is quick, really easy to use, and everything you need is right in front of you. They want people to feel like they can come to NOAH for all they need — nothing more, nothing less.
Reaching out to the next billion Bitcoin users needs to be straightforward, and that's what we aimed to communicate with our new website.
What's the first thing we want people to notice when visiting the website?
Both said that we want users to know that we're an app. In addition, because we're starting as a progressive web application, users need to know that they can download our app without going through the App Store or Google Play.
Beyond that, we want people to get excited, interested, and curious about what we do. We feel our website achieves that goal and are proud of the final product. Obviously, we want people to download the app and use our service, but we designed the website to be a tool to get people interested in what we do and how we can help them.
What's next for NOAH design-wise?
While we can't give away all our secrets, Brianna and Jonathan said the team is working on a few new things they're really excited about. From rewards, in-depth product descriptions, and a blog revamp, they said there's a lot in the works and even more on the horizon. They're excited to continue growing and evolving the brand, and they said that the website is just the beginning.
Check out the redesign here, and let us know your thoughts on Twitter and Discord.