Website redesign and rebrand for online evidence capture and preservation tool
SAAS
Investigators, journalists, law enforcement and other professionals need a way to safely research, track and preserve information—Hunchly can help
UX DESIGN + WRITING I CONTENT MAPPING I BRANDING
BACKGROUND
I don’t have to be asked twice to work on a project for a company with a podcast called Cloak & Dagger. Founded by Canadian ex-special forces, Sapper Labs built its business in cyber defense and digital forensics by offering customized intelligence solutions, services and support for governmental agencies and NGOs pursing critical causes (or, really important stuff)—anti-trafficking, human rights, cognitive warfare and other efforts to fight dis-information and exploitative behavior. In a quest to expand into the open source intelligence (OSINT) space, Sapper merged with Dark River Systems, the creators of Hunchly, a SaaS tool designed to help any professional—law enforcement, private investigators, journalists, cybersecurity analysts, human rights activists, insurance investigators, financial researchers, professors and students—search, trace and capture reliable information amidst a rapidly shifting digital universe. OSINT is the opposite of classified—it’s the process of gathering information from public sources like news sites, blogs, social media, and even the dark web, and it can be completed by anyone. Though open source is accessible to all, there’s the risk that information can change or disappear altogether. Hunchly records search histories, lets you organize and search on it, then create evidence ready, legally-defensible reports.
MY ROLE
I joined a highly collaborative team of creatives, developers and analysts as the UX consultant to work alongside Hunchly stakeholders to develop a website worthy of their unique investigative product. We engaged in a StoryBrand exercise and some light discovery work, then jumped into designing and building a new site as well as drafting plan to drive qualified traffic to it.
THE CHALLENGE
When Hunchly launched, product awareness and adoption grew organically through word of mouth in Canadian and American government circles. As time went on, the company recognized that to attract potential partners, expand offerings, and drive growth in their target markets, they would need to be strategic. Additionally, there were established competitors in the space, so at a minimum, Hunchly would need a polished and professional website that explained and demo’d their product and highlighted their unique value proposition. Hunchly is committed to the privacy and anonymity of its existing and prospective customers and thus does not track user behavior or data, save what it needs for billing purposes. And even though this project was focused on getting new users, not improving the experience of existing software users, we were unable to learn from those who were active users of the product.
THE APPROACH
We quickly identified three strategic initiatives that we could execute on swiftly and got buy-in from stakeholders, who were new to digital strategy work. First, we defined the Hunchly brand promise to inform subsequent digital project work. Next, we redesigned the website to reflect Hunchly’s unique mission, incorporating universal principles of user-centered design. Finally, we propose da paid media plan to drive qualified leads to the new website to convert to free product trials.
DISCOVERY LITE
BRAND TOUCHPOINT REVIEW
Given the accelerated project timeline and lack of access to existing users, my research and discovery efforts focused on a review of Hunchly’s digital footprint as well as stakeholder conversations. I would have liked the opportunity to complete some user research based persona work and a more a formal content audit, but given the time and budget, instead I relied on heuristic evaluations of their products and channels. Specifically, I found that the website had weak brand ownership, inadequate product education, confusing navigation, content gaps, unappealing visual design, a fragmented support experience, and no tracking. Even though it was outside of the initial project scope, I made a note to self that the free trial sign-up had an awkward email and licensing download flow, and though customers were loyal users of the desktop tool, accompanying browser plug-in, and outdated mobile app, all of the interfaces were calling out for an improved user experience.
INSIGHTS
The above review led me to four insights, that would serve as inspiration for the design going forward.
A brand that aims preserve the truth should model transparency
Stakeholders acknowledged that target users were often distrustful of OSINT tools on the market, unsure whether the technology would track their usage. But despite this, the Hunchly website felt anonymous, offering little product ownership and reassurance for a tool designed to promote trustworthiness.
Employee domain experience can foster trust
Sapper and Hunchly employees have credibility in the fields of intelligence and cybersecurity that the website was not leveraging give potential customers the confidence that the product was backed by seasoned practitioners in identity protection and data safety.
Target audiences don’t speak the same language
While the tool offers the same features for all users, its benefits could be expressed in the unique vernacular of each audiences. For example: private investigators need to "document casework efficiently" while journalists want to "log every source," and cyber security analysts want to “pull data into companion tools.”
Hunchly’s advantage is its flexibility and affordability
While competitive product websites were robust, content rich and polished, Hunchly had a distinct advantage: it was much less expensive, overall less complex, and could be adopted by individuals, companies and organizations with equal ease.
As a developer-designed website with a software focus, Hunchly never really thought about brand or how to best speak to potential users. So I presented a customer lifecycle to the client, aiming to show them where and why they were likely losing people. Given that they had no web analytics set up, this analysis was largely based on my website content audit, knowledge of conversion funnels, and prior support section design experience.
UX WORK
Next, I drafted a sitemap, knowing that phase one of the redesign might not include some of the newly proposed content and integrations because they would require wider buy-in, content development and integrations with third-party vendors. For instance, in an effort to address Insight #2: Employee domain experience can foster trust, I recommended we introduce a section for thought leadership in the field—case studies, interviews etc.
Additionally, I wanted to consolidate product help under a Hunchly branded landing page as opposed to linking immediately to Helpscout, their third-party support vendor.
But the biggest addition was The Hunchly Story, aimed to address Insight #1: A brand that aims preserve the truth should model transparency. Specifically, I recommended it include the backstory and team bios.
Given the tight timeline and the collaborative nature of my work with the visual designer and copywriter, I opted to do content mapping in place of low-fi or high-fi wireframes, capturing the must-have modules for each page as opposed to a precise layout. These were then used as a jumping off point on how to best present this content, for instance mini-demos for each of the three main product features: Capture, Organize and Report. For pages like Download, which required a step by step order with instructional messaging, I was more prescriptive.
CONTENT MAPPING
VISUAL DESIGN
EXPLORATIONS
We wanted to present the client with a few aesthetic directions for the website, and landing on the three below. Visual design: Piper Darley. Copy: Jon Berman
Direction 1: PRODUCT DRIVEN
While we appreciated the clean color blocking in this design, we realized that reduced contrast would make it less accessible and there was the chance that people would think Hunchly were selling hardware.given the focus on product imagery.
Direction 2: IMAGERY DRIVEN
While we appreciated the humanity that photography offers, we recognized the challenge of sourcing just-right images and the potential of alienating new or outlier audiences.
Direction 3: HUNCHLY GUY
Borrowed from the current site, the Hunchly Guy was one of the only owned brand assets our visual designer thought to hang on to build upon. The client really liked this playful approach and decided on this direction to pursue.
SELECTED DIRECTION: HUNCHLY GUY
The home page need to quickly educate the prospective customer with an overview of the tool followed by more specifics on its features and target audiences. We also developed a brand voice that was honest and direct, with navigation titles like Who It's For, Plans & Pricing, Hunchly Story, and calls to action like Try it Free.
For the Plans & Pricing page, we needed to bring clarity to the two types of Hunchly experiences: local data storage and singular access from your computer or cloud storage with the capability to access anywhere. We also emphasized the ow stakes free trial requiring no credit card. Both of these clarifications addressed Insight #4: Hunchly’s advantage is its flexibility and affordability.
The Hunchly Story page, a new addition to the website, aimed to ground the product in two ways: communicating the company’s mission and a providing its backstory. The bottom third of this page was intended for team bios, but this was withheld for the launch. See more on this in Learnings below.
On the Who It’s For page, we made sure to speak the language of each audience, e.g. "Automatically log every source for your story" for Journalists vs. "Pull data into companion tools like Recon NG" for cybersecurity analysts, which addressed Insight #3: Target audiences don’t speak the same language. We also leveraged existing customer quotes.
1) Respect client humility
In addition to the company's backstory, we wanted to introduce the team, to reassure potential buyers that there were real people behind the product. But while employees took pride in their work, they felt uncomfortable putting their names, faces and positions on the site—they felt like they were boasting. Solution: tossed text.
LEARNINGS
2) Let the brand promise guide design
We wanted to showcase the global usage of this product, which currently spans across 79 countries, but w/o pinpointing user location. A brand promise of Hunchly is that it does not track tool usage, and a soon to be released solution called Cloak, will mask user location, like a VPN but more secure.
Final design is an example of how motion is actually a solve, not adding animation for the sake of it, but as a way to be gestural, while still ephemeral.
3) Collect user data whenever possible
Opportunity to opt-in to tool usage?
Inconsistently implemented Google Analytics / Universal. Instead of email and Excel, introduced in-line forms via Hubspot CRM platform.
HUNCHLY TO COME
As the project concluded, we pondered the things we hoped to do in the future to build off of the new branding and website. Things like launch the paid media campaign we helped to devise, streamlining tool onboarding and redesign the tool interface to optimize the post-purchase Hunchly user experience, consolidate and elevate support articles and videos based on search and usage, and devise a content strategy to introduce branded content like white papers and case studies.
Do you need help tracking your online research, or are you investigating something important? Visit hunch.ly to sign up for a free trial.