The Truss

2024

Solo Project

Design Timeline: 1 month + Ongoing Updates

Truss provides the opportunity for business leaders and entrepreneurs to connect with their peers and create impactful relationships. This business group entity creates interactive business opportunities by creating travel environments for members to enjoy and connect outside of office spaces.

Problem:

The Truss site was outdated and in need of refreshing. I was tasked to do a complete rehaul on the design, sitemap, content and marketing assets.

New additions/marketing features:

Page - “How Truss Differs”
- Animated sliders with content
Asset - Interactive map

Role

Product Designer
UX +UI
Graphic Designer
Marketing

Industry

Networking
Travel

Perceived Solutions:

Give the site a new style while also preserving the essence of what Truss means to the stakeholder. Using clean typefaces, bold borders and sharp edges to give the site a strong and structured style.

Develop an interactive map that shows “Where we’ve been” and “Where we’re going” to visualize their travel destinations. This gives users a visual representation of past and future excursions at a click of a button.

Create the “How Truss Differs” page with interesting interactions that meet stakeholder marketing goals.

Design Tools

Figma
Photoshop
Illustrator
Relume

Buzzwords

User Experience
Responsive Design
System Design
Interaction Design
Prototyping

Just want to see the final result?

Check out the current site

PAIN POINTS

1️⃣

THE PROBLEM

1️⃣

PAIN POINTS 1️⃣ THE PROBLEM 1️⃣

Client’s Needs and wants

“We want an update to our website that is inviting and exclusive. the way we operate is completely different from other networking spaces. we take people out of the office and put them in high end experiences that is more organic to our members and those coming into the truss family. ”

Pillar To Post - CEO

The Problem:

Potential member sign ups were low and competition in the space is becoming oversaturated. What can we do to change the voice of Truss and the messaging of why they’re the best multi-millionaire networking club in Utah.

Pain Points:

Lack of new membership sign-ups.
Designs weren’t up to date
Messaging and marketing assets were out dated and needed a new voice.
Need for visibility on social networks and marketing strategy needed to be addressed.

Research

2️⃣

Discovery

2️⃣

Research 2️⃣ Discovery 2️⃣

Understanding Truss and why it differs

My team and I worked together to understand what separates Truss from other competitors.

Why Truss Differs
- The Truss “Way”
  - Changing the way you network.
  - Destination connections :
    - Instead networking the old school way Truss creates more connection through destinations and activities.
  - A strong founder and team that caters to to their members
  - Likeminded members with similar backgrounds to increase relatability and friendship synergy.
  - Business focused, friendship forward.

Testimonial interviews

“Truss improved my mental health with depression by helping me build connections with people I am happy to call family.”

— Quoted Source

“Having access to all the great people at Truss helped me understand my business goals better and how to achieve them. I grew my business 230%”

— Quoted Source

“I joined Truss to network in a fun and interactive way. I meet a lot of people and it gets very tiresome engaging in the same conversations time in and time out. Truss events are more personal and exciting, it makes networking less intimidating.”

— Quoted Source

Insights

Members want connection over everything.
The members of Truss don’t want to sit in a room or conference hall event anymore. They want interesting and unforgettable experiences.
Guidance is a focus as well as networking.

Persona

3️⃣

Persona 3️⃣

QUALIFICATION LEVELS

Ideation

4️⃣

Ideation 4️⃣

oLd design vs new concept

The concept here was to bring life to their hero splash and showcase what they do. In previous interviews with stakeholder they were critical about their brand colors so I made sure to run checks on every color variable to confirm consistency and accuracy.

With the concept design I created a new experience for users using an interactive map showing the past and future Truss trips

Old Design

New concept

Why Truss Differs Page concept

The idea behind this concept was requested by the marketing team and stakeholder of the company.

How do we differentiate Truss from other networking groups? The answer is by focusing on what Truss does great and why their members love being a part of this organization.

Sliders were implemented showing how other groups function vs Truss. The focus on destination networking conditions and how networking doesn’t have to be a buttoned up experience but a growing experience with like minded people.

ui design

5️⃣

ui design 5️⃣

Here are some style guides

Graphic assets I created for the website and socials

Usability testing

6️⃣

Iterations

6️⃣

Usability testing 6️⃣ Iterations 6️⃣

Edits

The concept design featured textures of gold leaf and marble. Stakeholder reviews showed that they preferred flat colors, while multiple user tests said they liked the textured backgrounds better. I decided to remove the textures contrary to user opinions which is a small concession to make on the overall site design.

The original design for “Why Join Truss” (left image) were simple cards with quick quotes from their team. After going back and forth with the stakeholder we ended up on expandable bios (right image).

The decision was made to remove another step of clicking “read more” prompting you to another page and give instant insight into the founders and team behind The Truss.

The design of each team member is accented with the Truss logo in the background.

Hover states were added to the map feature to give more interaction.