Strategy
Making impact
through empathy.
If your products and experiences aren’t clear and easy to use, you’re probably losing people. I help find the connection between your goals and your audiences’ needs, leaving people curious, enlightened, and ready to take the next step.
My Approach
What do we need to solve?
I’ll start by taking a look at the business case and asking questions to make sure stakeholders are aligned. Next, I’ll look at your competitors to understand what they’re doing well, and how you can stand out. Then, I’ll audit the usability, design, and content of the existing experience to identify improvements.
Who are we trying to reach?
It’s easy to get so focused on project goals that we forget to consider how it will benefit our audience. Looking at the product from the user’s perspective helps us identify solutions that will be most effective. I’ll take a look at demographics and psychographics to uncover potential customer problems, desires, behaviors, and attitudes.
How do we get there?
Once the business opportunity and user needs are identified, it’s time to establish a course of action. I help you create a strategic vision and tactics that will both solve the customer problems and meet the business needs.
What does it look like?
With a strategy in place, the design process can begin. The first step is to outline user journeys and content flows. Next, we’ll create wireframes that show how the experience could look and function. The wireframes serve as a working draft, allowing us to focus on the structure first, iterate quickly, and identify development risks early.
Is it ready to launch?
It’s hard to evaluate how useful and desirable a product is without trying it out on real people. I facilitate testing to see how users respond to prototypes, and use the findings to make informed refinements. I partner with creative, technical, and business teams throughout the process, and our deliverables are useful and usable for the people we hand off to.
Services
From discovery, to planning, to polishing, let’s make your experience click.
Strategy
Vision Refinement
User Research
Personas
User Testing
User Experience
Experience Maps
Wireframes
Prototypes
Content Strategy
Leadership
Workshop Facilitation
Stakeholder Alignment
UI Design Oversight
Development Oversight
“The way Laura engages both business and technical leaders, and takes them on a deliberate march, is fascinating. She's very gifted.”
Mike DeBock, Executive Director, NextEra Energy
“Laura Horan is curious, engaged, driven and accountable. Her strength, clarity of thought, integrity, and communication allowed us to hit important deadlines with great work.”
Mark Holterhaus, Director of Experience, Slalom
“Laura is a calm hand on the wheel. She strikes a Goldilocks balance between questions and facilitation.”
Rich Argentieri, President, NextEra Analytics
“Laura’s ability to think strategically while bringing innovative ideas to complex challenges made cross-departmental projects not only successful but genuinely enjoyable.”
Whitney Bauer, Head of Project Management, Superhuman
Case Studies
Granum
Brand and website experience for the merging of two landscaping software companies.
Twin Cities in Motion
Brand, portfolio, and website experience for a nonprofit movement organization.
Power Wizard
Product and website user experience for an online electricity provider brokerage service.