Landscape Research and Visual Design

Problem

Research the viability of a online course in landscape design for middle income homeowners to create a stream of passive income for my client a landscape architect.

Stakeholder Interview

I began by discussing my clients goals for her online course and her potential customers. My client wanted to know if “do it youselfers” between 20 and 40 would take an online video course in landscape design and implement what they learned in their own yards and how she could best monetize this course.

Research Protocol User Interviews

I developed a research plan including a screener for potential users and started recruiting participants. My research plan included my learning objectives for the study, the steps I would take to prepare for and record each interview, and the questions I would ask each participant. I asked each of my six participants about the larger context of their lives, how they make changes, how they find information, and their degree of environmental concern. 

Analyzing research

After I had conducted six interviews I began to see similarities in their responses so I began analyzing the information I had gathered. I searched the interview transcripts for participants’ utterances about their goals, tasks, beliefs, or feelings. I collected this data in a spreadsheet and used the collected data to create an empathy map of potential users.

Presenting Findings

Looking at the data from the interviews provided me with a few clear insights about the users. I presented key insights about my client’s potential customers. I showed her that potential customers were not interested in the video course she had originally planned. I also looked into her business goals and presented my client with other possible solutions teach homeowners about landscaping and earn her passive income.

Enabling Advertisements

My client was interested in was monetizing her current blog through advertisements. It also had some clear usability issues. I proposed a plan to conduct a heuristic analysis of the whole site and Address some of the usability issues I had seen in addition to enabling ads.

Heuristic and SWOT Analysis

I also conducted a SWOT analysis of her business. I shared the results of my analyses, along with examples of the issues I found with my client and we created a plan going forward. I would clarify the design logic of her site as a whole as well as updating the layout and visual design of each page. 

New Style and Information Architecture

I created a plan for consistent styling throughout the site as well as reorganization of content. I moved about content in the footer of the original site to the about and contact pages. I created sketches, wireframes, and mockups of the main pages of the site showing my changes.

Implementation on Squarespace with CSS

I worked within Sqaurespace’s framework to implement my reorganize and redesign the site. I used custom CSS to enable advertising on her blog pages and style the new site. Once the visual design work was finished I performed QA testing on each page of the site on both desktop and mobile devices.