UX Research & bilingual Website Redesign - Education

(Japanese market)

CONTEXT

A small English school in Japan, with a recent change in management and structure, with a 30-year history, was in need of a total rebranding - logo & website.

PROBLEM:

The English school website was originally created in Java and was unresponsive, difficult to edit by the school administration, and had an outdated UI with accessibility issues.

SOLUTION:

Following the bigger picture, there were a few solutions outside of only digital space, but for the purpose of the portfolio,o I will mention only 2:

Designing a responsive bilingual website that answers user needs (current & future clients) in WordPress (first MVP) - according to research, the majority of users are using the mobile site to access the website.
Setting up Google Analytics for future improvements.

MY ROLE:

Consulting on rebranding & creating brand guidelines. Performing quantitative and qualitative research, UX Design - website from scratch to final product (using WordPress) and writing. Starting from creating MVO in English, to transforming it into a bilingual website with Japanese as the primary language.

GOAL:

Define the future users by doing Customer Research and launching a bilingual website that would provide clear information for current and prospective customers.

METHODS

Competitive Analysis,
Stakeholder Interview,
Personas, Survey,
Interview,
Card Sorting,
Information Architecture,
Lean UX

TOOLS: Whiteboard, Google Forms, Maze, Figma, WordPress

Understand

I started the project by trying to understand the school and stakeholders, teachers, owners, current customers, and culture.

Methods:

Stakeholder interview (owner, teacher, and customer)
Competitive Analysis: (SWOT, and Competitive analysis table-point system)
Customer Research (to define current market) and define potential users Developing Personas

Things I needed to consider:

Japanese market and its specifications

The history and emotional connection of customers to the school
At this point, Japan was closed for 3 years, and due to the Yen going down, flight tickets are still fairly expensive + the Japanese government had a big promotion of almost 50% discount for vaccinated citizens to stay and

Customer Research Findings:

Almost 50% of our customers in a range of 39 - 45 yrs, and around 35% between 46 - 60 yrs - which was higher than expected

Around 37% of customers have studied English abroad, and only around 12% had never studied English
The majority of parents expressed that kids enjoy learning Engish and often express themselves through English songs
when deciding on extra curriculum activities they consider in this order of importance: what is good for them long term, what do children enjoy, and what location
Most parents think it’s highly important to expose their kids to different cultures
majority of parents spend up to 1 hr on social media a day with the majority
In their free time, they do shopping or go outdoors
For vacation, most families stay at home and relax or travel domestically. A minor percentage goes outdoors (like camping) or travels abroad

Brand Guidelines

MVP

Due to time constraints, I went along with the MVP for the time being. Due to Bambino being a small school, they wanted a simple option that they can edit themselves easily - between different options they have selected WordPress.

Most important was to have a responsive bilingual website that would provide immediate answers and information.

At the moment card sorting research is completed, and I will do a content review before doing the first edits.

At this point in the plan is:

Complete personas
Adding price
Adding another form for selecting documents
Making some content adaptive instead of responsive