Challenge
Founded in 1947 by a young couple who wanted to provide affordable laundry services to Los Angeles’ booming apartment community, WASH Multifamily Laundry Systems has grown into a national brand with over 31 branch offices, and their laundry machines can be found in over 70,000 locations serving over 7 million people. While maintaining their roots of traditional laundry rooms, WASH has pushed the industry’s technology through changes like converting laundry machines from coin based operations to card based; allowing users to load funds on a card and carry their balance in their wallet rather than a pocket full of quarters. With the goals of the redesign outlined, our team had clear focus and direction for the UX component of the website redesign.
Solution
Discovery The WASH project started with a dense and involved Discovery process where we interviewed key stakeholders in order to identify pain points on the old website and set some goals for the redesign. Through the course of the Discovery meetings, we found that WASH’s stakeholders were interested in three major improvements to the website: --> Connect with customer/consumer needs --> Increase brand awareness --> Facilitate interaction These improvements helped drive the UX and design phases of the project. UX Strategy With the goals of the redesign outlined, our team had clear focus and direction for the UX component of the website redesign. Jumping into wireframes, our Director of Projects and Strategy, Senior Project Manager, and Senior Designer got together for a collaborative working session. Beginning with the homepage and with the client’s goals in mind, we began organizing content and laying out the necessary elements for an effective homepage. Once we were satisfied with the homepage architecture, we moved on to the individual internal pages, following a similar process of organizing content and creating wireframes based on WASH’s goals to later be fleshed out in the designs. Build With our user experience strategy complete, our design team began adding color and image to our wireframes. In terms of imagery, it was important that we didn’t focus so much on images of people doing laundry, but diverse groups of people enjoying life. WASH isn’t selling a product. They are selling a lifestyle. By using the WASH laundry units, their clients are buying in to easy to use machines and are provided with the freedom to spend their time as they please: relaxing on the couch with their families, teaching their sons how to fold clothes, or enjoying a nice meal. We spent a lot of time choosing the right images and it paid-off. The stakeholders at WASH really appreciated the time we spent crafting the right images for the new designs and really landed with their demographic.
Results
WASH’s old website was in dire need of a redesign. The images were outdated and didn’t fit their demographic, the copy wasn’t direct and didn’t tell a story, and their UX was non-existent. The designs that we delivered to the client were a huge improvement and hit each of the goals they created during the Discovery process. That said, the project was contracted for design work and not for development. After delivering the design files to WASH they began implementing the designs on their site with their in-house development team. It has been a few months since we delivered the designs and their team is still working on development, however they are getting close to launching and we can’t wait to see our designs implemented on their live site.
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