CGM Consulting

CGM Consulting is an IT company with several years of experience in the field, they gained a reputation for their consistent delivery quality.
They develop Software, Application and act as a recruiter company specialized in finding Programmers and IT experts for long and short term project for other big to medium sized companies.

They wanted to improve three key areas of their business they had trouble with:

• Improve the number of young to medium experienced applicants to be employed by them
• Save time with estimate requests, non committing clients and generally improve potential new clients User experience
• Improve the brand look and feel to stand out from the competition
  

_Challenges

The first step taken was to rethink the image of the company. We kept the same design concept of the origami, since it represents the company message: “something complex and beautiful can come from something as simple as a piece of paper”

I redesigned the logo, rethought the color scheme and the overall look and feel.

But that was the easy part.

To solve the issue we needed more user insights to successfully find the right solution and design a website that could improve on the topics CGM had issues with.

To do that we set up an anonymous survey to gather data about the target demographics.
With open ended questions the analysis of users’ answer is usually more challenging but allows for a better understanding of reasoning and emotions behind their choices.

_Audience

From the answer gathered after the survey I was able to build two user personas for our target audience. To better present my case to CGM management and reach a better solution for their problem I also developed two user journeys.

The findings on the two target demographic: a 20 something young computer science student living far from home and the 55 something small business owner, who ignores the complexity programming languages and development; helped solidify my decision to give more emphasis and work more on the estimate form and the career page section.

_Solution

After gathering the information I began reordering my ideas.
The goal was not only to give emphasis to the sections that needed it the most, but to be able to guide the user depending on their needs through CGM website, improving the stressful task of job hunting when possible and help potential clients have a better understanding of project requirements (also filter unprofessional non-paying clients, thus saving time estimating projects that will never begin).

Luckily there was also another aspect of CGM consulting that I could use to my advantage.
They organize courses on different programming languages (for people that are already familiar with them) subsidized by the state, this means free for participants. They also have pretty high employment percentage rate after the course is ended, 80 to 90% will get hired right after.
We just needed to let more people know.

I pushed the Idea of guide the navigation of our target audience, thus I developed a concept where on the landing page a user is prompted to follow one of three CTA’s, to look at open positions or to request an estimate for a project.
Closely connected to this there’s the satisfied customers section; showcasing the customers of CGM we can connect the value of working with CGM or applying for them to the same value of the clients of CGM.
A young employee will see it like an opportunity to work for some big names in the field, and a potential client will see it as a confirmation of CGM quality of work.

_Process

After agreeing on the finalized mockups, taking into consideration the previously introduced color sheme and overall updated look and feel I worked to a final version of the CGM website to present to the management, development team to implement and use it for a final round of Testing with selected target groups.

Thanks to the application of the design thinking process, by discussing the wireframe mockups and drafts early on, building components and finalize the high-fidelity mockups was a pretty straight forward and smooth process.

A potential employee will start at the landing page, select the work with CGM section and end up in the Career page, where, divided into three sections: first experience, middle level and Senior he will be able to preview the different open positions tailored to his needs and experience.
Same goes for a client, they will end up in the “ask for an estimate” section, where by filling out the form, will be able to have a rough idea of the estimate for any given project I might want to ask CGM to develop.

_Considerations

We worked a lot on the first phases of the design process, careful not to get stuck and fall in love with the first ideas.
The working relationship with CGM allowed me to be able to take time and try different ways to come up with a good solution for their problems.

The website implementation finds itself currently still on hold, due to covid and other issue that had priority. Nevertheless, the management is happy with the work and will update the website shortly.