In June 2021, my team and I were tasked with working on a landing page dedicated to the LGBTQIA+ community in collaboration with MBUSA’s Social team in honor of Pride month. We engaged in forward thinking dialogue about ways to integrate the specific campaign activation of Safe Spaces, in addition to strategizing on how the website can support longer-term Pride initiatives outside of the campaign. The Pride page hosts evergreen content throughout the year, and we redesigned it to simultaneously drive business, demonstrate a genuine commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community and further establish MBUSA values. This project is currently live on mbusa.com and can be found here.
Safe Spaces
Design Process
Team: 2 UX Designers, 1 Project Manager, 1 Copy Writer & 1 Visual Designer
Role: UX Designer and Content Strategist
Tools: Figma and Adobe Experience Manager
Mercedes Benz is a historically risk adverse company with an average customer age of 55. Our design challenge was, how might we provide users with an inclusive experience that takes a bold stance, shows a bigger commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community and reaches a younger, more diverse audience through MBUSA digital platform.
Design Challenge
Our point of innovation and emphasis here was to connect Mercedes-Benz's commitment to artistic expression and individuality to celebrate and genuinely support Pride Month and the LGBTQIA+ community ongoing. We made sure to reinforce Mercedes-Benz commitment to safety, as it extends beyond the vehicle and into our personal and digital lives while offering individuals in the LGBTQIA+ community an opportunity to share their stories, as a commitment to empathy, listening and understanding.
Solution
Research
Analysis of Original Pride Page
With the phenomenon of rainbow-washing (defined here) abundant during pride month, my team and I wanted to investigate areas of opportunity on how our landing page could exhibit a refreshing approach by means of MBUSA.com advocating for the LGBTQIA+ community.
First we analyzed the Pride page from the previous year (linked here) by conducting a brief Heuristic Evaluation to test usability through our expert review. Our primary thought process was to find difficulties in understanding navigation or functionality in a user’s experience, as well as figuring out what changes needed to be implemented to improve overall business performance. We considered questions such as:
● What age group am I designing for? Why?
● What are their needs? Why?
● What are their goals? Why?
●How does Mercedes show an authentic commitment to Pride month?
Through our audit, we found that the original Pride page does not show an authentic commitment to Pride month. Instead, it emphasizes ownership and marketing vehicles to viewers with copy such as “A Proud Owner Speaks” and “Our Mercedes Benz Family.”
Competitive Analysis
Next, we analyzed various Pride pages to see how other e-commerce platforms (Uber, IBM, Girlfriend Collective) are engaging with the challenge of creating pages that genuinely commit to the LGBTQIA+ community. We found that these other companies created very engaging pages that transparently showed how they are actively helping the LGBTQIA+ community by promoting education and transparently displaying partnerships.
Key Research Insights
After our research, we found that we wanted to radically change the Mercedes Pride Page since the current page emphasizes owning a Mercedes-Benz vehicle rather than highlighting and embracing the LGBTQIA+ community.
Other e-commerce brands show genuine commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community without explicitly trying to sell their products to the user.
Our goal became that our redesign needed to have a high level focus on transparency, commitment and education.
Insights to Features
1.
Highlight the purpose of Safe Spaces and how Mercedes-Benz is committed to taking a stand with the LGBTQ community.
Insight
Feature
Hero Image & Video highlighting the campaign overview.
This highlights MB's belief that safety is more than a feature — it’s a right. Mercedes-Benz is committed to taking a stand with the LGBTQIA+ community to provide a safe space on the road, and off.
Conclusion
Transparency about the reality of being a member of the LGBTQIA+ and giving the community a platform to share their story.
Insight
2.
Feature
Slide Show
Mercedes-Benz teams up with trans, non-binary pro-skater, Leo Baker, to share their story and encourage others in the LGBTQIA+ community to share theirs. By opening more channels of communication, MB can highlight the importance of authenticity and allyship for other gay, lesbian, trans and non-binary athletes.
Conclusion
Openly display commitments to the LGBTQIA+ community by listing partnerships and supporting organizations that help champion LGBTQA+ rights.
Insight
3.
Tile Grid
Feature
Through partnerships and alliances, Mercedes-Benz aims to support the right to freedom of expression and authenticity.
Conclusion
Allow users the opportunity to learn more about becoming an ally and championing for LGBTQA+ inclusivity.
Insight
4.
Feature
Content cards that help users understand (Language, Visibility, Respect and Advocacy)
Users that come to mbusa.com are able to learn more about becoming an ally and championing LGBTQIA+ inclusivity.
Conclusion
Content Strategy
For the content strategy portion of this project, we had to map our research findings that led to specific features and align them with content modules in Adobe Experience Manager.
Low Fidelity Wireframe
Utilizing Figma, we created low-fidelity wireframes using the AEM modules, internally shared them for critiques with the team and iterated until we all agreed on the best design for the Pride Page.
Final Design
Please view the live site here.
This project is currently live on mbusa.com. We accomplished high user engagement on the site in which users spent about 6 minutes on the page by creating a meaningful, engaging experience. Special thanks to my team for their support. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out!
Wrap Up, Metrics & Performance Insight.
On August 12th, the Pride page was launched.
To date, 87 users have visited with an average time on page of 5 minutes and 42 seconds.
This indicates high engagement with page content.
Low bounce rate of 22.08%
Traffic coming to the Pride page is largely from Desktop users coming directly to the page (likely primarily internal visits).
Pride Page Early Results