Bambino International Preschool & Eiken Academy
A small English school in Japan with a recent change in management and structure with a 30-year history was in need of a total rebranding - logo & website.
Intro
MY ROLE
Consulting on rebranding & creating brand guidelines. UX Design - website & app in the future.
HYPOTHESIS
When the project started, the school was operating and accepting applications for the next school year, so we needed to rush with the MVP website. By some statistics, Japanese users are 75% mobile, so the site needed to be responsive, while later, we might adjust some sections with an adaptive design.
METHODS
Competitive Analysis, Stakeholder Interview, Personas, Survey, Interview, Card Storting, Information Architecture, Lean UX
GOAL
Define the future users by doing Customer Research and launching a bilingual website that would provide clear information for current and prospective customers.
TOOLS
Whiteboard, Google forms, Maze, Figma, WordPress
WHY REBRANDING
Like in many small businesses in Japan, the logo was outdated/busy and not created in vector, which made it hard to use in high-pixel print. It didn’t make sense to create a website before rebranding since the web should be in sync with the brand guidelines. Considering my previous agency experience where I participated in several rebranding projects, I agree to lead this. The logo solutions were executed with the help of graphical designer: Matea Suljic from Croatia.
Understand
I started the project by trying to understand the school and stakeholders, teachers, owners, current customers, and culture.
Methods:
Stakeholder interview (owner, teacher, and customer)
Competitive Analysis: (SWOT, and Competitive analysis table-point system)
Customer Research (to define current market) and define potential users Developing Personas
Things I needed to consider:
Japanese market and its specifications
History and emotional connection of customers to the school
At this point, Japan was closed for 3 years, and due to Yen going down flight tickets are still fairly expensive + Japanese government had a big promotion of almost 50% discount for vaccinated citizens to stay and
Customer Research Findings:
Almost 50% of our customers in a range of 39 - 45 yrs, and around 35% between 46 - 60 yrs - which was higher than expected
Around 37% of customers have studied English abroad, and only around 12% had never studied English
The majority of parents expressed that kids enjoy learning Engish and often express themselves through English songs
when deciding on extra curriculum activities they consider in this order of importance: what is good for them long term, what do children enjoy, and what location
Most parents think it’s highly important to expose their kids to different cultures
majority of parents spend up to 1 hr on social media a day with the majority
In their free time, they do shopping or go outdoors
For vacation, most families stay at home and relax or travel domestically. A minor percentage goes outdoors (like camping) or travels abroad
Brand Guidelines
MVP
Due to time constraints, I went along with the MVP for the time being. Due to Bambino being a small school, they wanted a simple option that they can edit themselves easily - between different options they have selected WordPress.
Most important was to have a responsive bilingual website that would provide immediate answers and information.
Content Testing
At the moment card sorting research is completed, and I will do a content review before doing the first edits.
At this point in the plan is:
Complete personas
Adding price
Adding another form for selecting documents
Making some content adaptive instead of responsive
