Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Jeff Nissen

Problem-solving is the same across the board of design studies. We’re all asking the same types of questions with one overarching goal: make the product as easy as possible for the end-user.

That applies to a logo as much as it does a button in an app.

As I dive into this branding design case study, my aim is to connect the dots between my graphic design and art director foundation to my current role as a product designer.

This is a hybrid case study: part informative, part soapboxing. But, a small, humble soapbox.

To Be Branded

Happy Valley Conference Center (I’ll refer to them as Happy Valley) offers guests the opportunity to host single day, or overnight programs like family reunions, science camps, and leadership retreats.

This little building is named “Pine Cone”

The buildings are a bit old, dating back to the 50s, and some have more charm than others, but all in all, the semi-rustic feel is perfectly acceptable–even loved–by the guests who come year after year.

Why wouldn’t they? Located at the edge of the Santa Cruz Mountains, hillsides of tall redwoods, hidden and exposed fields atop and below, orchards, gardens, and a spring-fed creek running through, all grace nearly 80 acres of land; this is Happy Valley Conference Center.

It is energizing. It is peaceful. It’s fucking gorgeous.

The Problem

Happy Valley had a fading identity. It had energy behind it at one time, but it focused on a very narrow and shrinking audience which was slowly choking off its revenue.

What remained of any momentum their identity had had all but come to a stop.

In this case, Happy Valley’s owner-group was the source of the previous identity’s momentum and its pain; it was their own numbers that were dwindling and choking.

For those in the owner group who remained, to say they were emotionally invested in their brand doesn’t quite cut it; they were guardians and making a stand. Something I admire and certainly wish for in an audience.

I knew that if I could give them an identity more full of depth of character, they would eventually get behind it and staunchly defend and promote it to a more effective degree than ever before.

Fog burns off as the A-Frame lodge, field, and pool ease into the morning light.

Difficult conversations took place, each one approached with respect and empathy.

I didn’t waver in my testimony: It’s difficult to exist without much of an identity; no voice, look, or style. Just think about the last time you actively sought someone out for their lack of charm, personality, and style.

Happy Valley is an amazing friend, but they’re hanging out in the corner at the party. They needed friends to help spread the word of their greatness.

Folks who were from Santa Cruz couldn’t tell you much about Happy Valley. Some had driven by and could recognize the A-frame lodge, or knew about it from its proximity to local geography; “Oh, that place.”

Their kitchen staff also provided school lunches to Happy Valley Schools, just down the road, for 15 years, but that relationship wasn’t coupled with much exposure.

Happy Valley provides a platform for people to have some amazing transformative experiences and the people who know about Happy Valley adore it and all its quirks. They talk about it. They trust it.

No one else gave a shit.

Zero conversation around a brand is a massive problem because conversation and brand image are how trust begins.

In its absence, Happy Valley was experiencing:

failing identity
trailing guest bookings with long-time guest groups
weakening community presence

Happy Valley website 2013

Tarnishing their image further, visiting Happy Valley’s website in 2012 was like being warped back in time with a machine parsing bits of 1998 along with bits of 2004, and nothing from 2013. It resulted in a successful user scare-tactic, sending customers scrambling for the back button.

The Solution

It’s safe to say that Happy Valley’s biggest problem wasn’t the lack of brand or modern website.

They weren’t solving for trust.

Trust is among the many problems I solve daily as a product designer, as I did, in this case, wearing many other design hats.

So, here’s what I and Happy Valley set out to do:

Confirm current target audience
Research any newly identified targets
Build a brand around Happy Valley & its target audiences
Create an identity package
Build a responsive website with an online reservation feature
Achieve cohesiveness across all platforms and mediums
Establish a foundation for building customer trust

They needed more. So much more. But, as with any business, there are always countless and constant pulls on resources.

Prioritization often feels like neglecting one of your children. Or at least I assume. I don’t have kids. I have a dog that I adore. And, my heart aches when on the extremely rare occasions she’s been in a kennel for 8 hours.

Sometimes priorities make you look like an asshole …

Sometimes priorities make you look like an asshole because people feel unheard or neglected. But, with processes in place, it’s more a case of “Sorry, girl, I’m coming for you, Charlie!”

Alongside Happy Valley, we identified:

what problem solutions would have the most impact
what could be solved quickly and easily
what needed solving for over time

The Process

I had a unique opportunity while working with Happy Valley. As part of my contract, I lived in a house just off-site, which made learning about Happy Valley rather easy; especially when it came to observing how they interacted with their guests.

Together with their executive board and management, we defined who Happy Valley is, and who they wanted to become. The last thing I’d want to do is design a brand for a basket-weaving company who didn’t tell me about their plans to slowly phase out wicker and glue for carbon-fiber and rivets.

Dinner event in the main room of the A-frame lodge

Defining the user

When I came to Happy Valley, a change in management, a renewed goal to seek out new revenue streams and revitalize the old were all underway.

This meant re-asking who their ideal customer was and we were able to define this through investigating:

Guest history
Competitive analysis
Happy Valley limitations
Happy Valley unique value propositions
Cost/benefit analysis

Historically the guest-base could be described as serving a large varying population who are budget-conscious.

We explored the sectors of education, social justice, self-help, technology, and children’s programming as new streams of revenue.

What this data returned was a roadmap for the future. I confirmed the current target guest wasn’t going to change; who Happy Valley could immediately begin targeting; who they could target in 5–10 years.

This is valuable information for defining a brand. It sets the stage for what is possible in what makes up the brand. It confines and defines the brand space, which should make design problem-solving easier.

Studying the Guest

Ethnography might never be so easy again.

Living so close to my subject matter allowed for a deeper look into the hows and whys of Happy Valley guests.

I learned why they came, how they used the space, what they valued in the land and infrastructure, and why they kept coming back.

I was uncovering why visitors cherished Happy Valley. I also learned what wasn’t cherished, but we’ll keep this light.

Better together

Having the resources of Happy Valley so close offered value to the process. Collaborating with management, and their camp management interns on a regular basis played a large part in the overall brand development.

Colors palettes and typography were projects I explored with interns; walking them through the process of poring over hundreds of typefaces, and color combinations and why it all mattered.

Copy style, voice, tone, image style, and tone were all explored with management input.

The tagline solution came to life in a rapid-fire whiteboard session with executive management that churned out a line that succinctly speaks volumes.

“Experience. Dynamic. Transformation.”

As a sentence, it speaks to Happy Valley’s essential platform. Broken down:

“You come here to experience life; to learn, love, heal and play. Our land and spaces allow for your time to be as dynamic as you wish. We hope your time here is transformative and that you leave here feeling rejuvenated.”

Designing a logo

All aspects of research influenced logo exploration direction, and a significant influence came from my time discovering who Happy Valley is and would be.

Happy Valley logo in 2012

“We’re a vessel. We’re a place for groups of people to gather and do what serves their purpose while they’re with us. They fill in with their own programming and we support them as stewards and guardians of the land, providing lodging, and nourishment.
Our ownership group and our religious affiliation play a part only in that we wish to do good in our community. We open our grounds to all, regardless of beliefs, orientation, or community.”

My initial direction

I’ve observed over the years that in areas where the landscape or terrain draws in tourism, businesses tend to rely heavily on that angle. Snow peak mountains in a ski town; palm trees in a beach town.

Businesses in Santa Cruz, CA seemed to used redwoods or ocean-type things in their marketing and branding, falling in line with my assumption. In fairness, I’ve never tracked this and being the brand snob I am, I may have a personal bias that amplifies things I find annoying in branding.

Since redwoods cover Happy Valley, I wanted to avoid this logo trap.

I avoided the tree at every corner until I couldn’t.

There was a time I was more stubborn. Experiences like designing the Happy Valley logo has made me less so.

I didn’t want the damn tree referenced in the logo, but the executive director, with his unwavering, kind demeanor, insisted the tree be explored.

Fine. I like to think I’m good at admitting when I’m wrong.

His prodding and deeper appreciation for the role the redwood trees play on the grounds was inspiring. He talked with me about how the massive groves rely on their vast, shallow root systems to feed each other and keep each other alive, and how those trees are a metaphor for outreach and support that Happy Valley embraces.

Our conversation led to a design that I otherwise wouldn’t have explored. To this day, I value the design for all its meaning, the combined effort that went into it, and lessons learned from the process.

The logo

The following comes from my presentation to the Happy Valley executive board and executive director:

Presentation sketching of the current Happy Valley logo

The Redwood Grove:
In this abstract of redwoods, it’s imagined that the viewer would be lying down in the center of a grove looking up at the immense height of redwoods. This vantage point portrays inward and outward motion and energy.
These concepts of motion and energy are symbolic of both transformation and renewal as it’s necessary for the self to look inwardly and outwardly to achieve one or the other or both.

Additional concepts presented to the Happy Valley Board

The Website Process

I designed the Happy Valley site with a much lesser understanding of the UX design process than I command today.

Happy Valley’s website showing the “Leap of Faith” jump, a part of their High Ropes Course.

Still, we set out to solve the website problem to make things easy for the visitor by providing logical information and site architecture, making it simple for the visitor to find out what Happy Valley offers, see if/when they were available for their event, and making reservations.

When determining the architecture, we continually asked ourselves:

Would this make sense to the user?
Is this easy enough?
Is this too much information?
Is this enough information?

Employees of Happy Valley, friends, and family tested the site, and, admittedly, it was inadequate information-gather by my standards today. Still, pain-points were addressed, but most attempts at improvements to the site came over time as feedback from guests trickled in, and site analytics data became relevant.

The Results

There was no theatrical public announcement the Happy Valley branding was complete, or a new website was up and running.

It just started working.

Happy Valley’s ownership of a market share in a limited market for meeting space in Santa Cruz intrinsically makes finding them in an internet search easier.

You might ask “Google brought up their site before. What did you change?”

Trust. Well-executed design solutions, based on research, established a voice and style that empowered an already strong voice to be heard.

Now people are willing to listen.

We introduced trust, and because of it:

A renewed common voice amongst owner group
Trusting, outward community presence
Contact through website increased immediately
First online reservation made within three months
50–60% increase in overnight and day-use business in the first year
Previously dwindling group numbers increasing with the largest increase in mid-week business
24% increase in operations income, 2013–2014
55% increase in operations income, 2013–2016

Happy Valley branding was made public in 2013; the new website was launched in March of 2014.

With new branding in place, Happy Valley began participating in Chamber of Commerce events, business fairs, etc., and let the brand do its part.

Conversations around town began shifting from “I’ve never heard of them” to “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen them around somewhere–what do they do?”

Summary

Happy Valley’s identity is something people can talk about and get behind now. And, maybe even more importantly, it gave the employees of the conference center something to get behind; it gave them a common voice, too.

The brand I built along Happy Valley embodies memorable trust in visitors because the brand was believable and relatable.

The embodiment of these qualities for your users and guests is an absolute must in order to begin earning and establishing their trust. It’s crucial when trying to make a thing like a website work; pretty designs cannot achieve this alone.

To design a brand–anything–a process must have brought your design solutions to life.

It must have a life-force that keeps it alive, as well, and as the case with any cyclical design process, a brand must continue to re-evaluate and evolve.

Happy Valley continues to grow, adding value to its foundational brand essence in a way that can only come over time. They are growing into their skin nicely, constantly deriving deeper meaning; trust; conversations; relationships; pockets 😉

Understanding the client, the end-user, be it a guest at a hotel, or the user of a bad-ass new app like Station, it is of the utmost importance to do the homework, ask the questions, allow for the awkward silence, test, and give way to the guidance and inspiration only data can give.

From it, good things will come.

Thanks for reading!

Please, spend some time clapping if you liked what you read.
Social media shares are appreciated, too.
I’m available for consulting, or full time for the right fit. jeffdoes.design

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Case Study: A Trustworthy Voice in Branding Design was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Case Study: A Trustworthy Voice in Branding Design

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