Version 1
Using input I received during my discovery, I created a first version of the wireframes. I understood that the agency wanted to utilize a lot of motion and that the customer wanted the site to be engaging. So I tried to use best-practice UX techniques while keeping the spirit of the all-Flash design in tact.
Unfortunately, this initial wireframe did not land with the customer. It was reported back to me that they were still frustrated.
The first concept for a home page, that gave nutrition information
Some of the ideas were good in this phase, like sharing photos from Flickr
The Problem
I realized that I didn't understand the problem the customer was trying to solve. The Design Director at the agency did not want to pull me directly into the customer meetings, since I was an outside contractor. They couldn’t articulate the problem or explain why their ideas didn’t resonate with the customer. I suggested that the issue might be subtle and that the customer might not have the words to express it. I convinced them to let me listen to their next customer call to gain insights. During that call the customer said something that I jotted down in my notebook and circled many times:
"We don't want to be commodities based."
I hurried back to the drawing board and created a new version of the site that focused less on the items they sell and more around what they wanted to mean to people when they thought of the brand.
Version 2
This next version landed much better with the customer. The site was designed around the lifestyle of the end user, rather than the individual products from the customer. And even though I had an issue with an all-Flash version of a site, I was happy to apply UX best-practices I employed to help find a solution.
While the original version of this site is lost to the annals of history, the customer ended up choosing not to use a Flash-only version of their site, which was a usability win in my book.
The new design focused on lifestyle, rather than commodities
