Rita Lab Reimagined
Client:
Rita Group
Year:
2024
Services:
UX/UI,Product
Deliverables:
Responsive website
A three-month website redesign to bring Rita Lab’s digital presence up to date with its new brand identity. The goal: reduce friction, improve usability, and elevate storytelling through a responsive, user-centered experience.
/ Overview
/ empathize
1.1 Understanding the Landscape
Our first step was to understand the landscape. Who our users are, what they need, and where the website was falling short. We began with a heuristic evaluation and site audit, which helped us identify early pain points and opportunities for improvement. These insights shaped our user survey, ensuring we gathered relevant feedback aligned with both user needs and business goals.
We also conducted a competitive analysis to understand how other community-based platforms were structuring their experiences. This helped us position Rita Lab more clearly in the space and identify best practices for usability, communication, and accessibility.
/ define
2.1 Framing the Challenge
How might we improve Rita Lab’s website to reach MVP status while reducing user friction, increasing mentor bookings, simplifying event attendance, and boosting blog engagement?
Through weekly standups, competitor audits, and feedback from real users, we surfaced clear opportunities to improve the experience. These insights informed our next steps toward building a more intuitive, accessible, and goal-driven site.
Goals for this phase:
Minimize friction across key user flows
Increase mentor session bookings
Simplify sign-up and participation for events
Encourage more interaction with blog content
/ ideate
3.1 Brainstorming Toward MVP
With clearly defined goals in place, our design team held weekly brainstorming sessions to explore how we could move Rita Lab’s website toward MVP status. These collaborative discussions helped us prioritize impactful updates that would reduce friction, streamline user flows, and improve engagement.
3.2 Collaboration & Alignment
Stakeholder Engagement
To ensure strategic alignment, we regularly met with key stakeholders, including the CEO and Brand team, after weekly internal standups. During these sessions, we presented insights, reviewed proposed design changes, and gathered feedback on content prioritization and feature implementation.
Rather than relying on a single handoff moment, we embraced an iterative collaboration model—maintaining continuous feedback loops with stakeholders and developers to ensure a smooth launch and brand consistency across all pages.
/ Prototype
4.1 Design & Development Alignment
Close collaboration between design and development was key to delivering a seamless MVP experience. Throughout the build, we worked closely via Discord and regular check-ins to address design questions, integrate feedback, and iterate in real-time. This ensured visual consistency, functionality, and efficient problem-solving across all responsive breakpoints.
Our iterative and communicative process helped eliminate handoff gaps and ensured that what was built aligned precisely with our design intent.
*insert card carousel annotated cards*
/ Final Design
Collaborating & Iterating Toward Launch
To bring the site to MVP status, our team maintained a consistent feedback loop across all collaborators. We held weekly internal meetings to track outstanding tasks, assign responsibilities, and align on key decisions.
Weekly check-ins with the CEO provided technical feedback and product direction, while additional meetings with the brand team ensured visual alignment with Rita Lab’s refreshed identity.
Success wasn’t just about visuals—it was about cross-functional alignment. By iterating based on input from UX, development, and brand, we ensured the final product met quality standards from all angles. The website was only considered launch-ready once we achieved full alignment across experience, design, and implementation.
/ Reflections & learnings
6.1 Learning to Lead with Alignment
One of the biggest challenges was working with a distributed team across multiple time zones. In the early stages, misalignment led to inconsistencies across screens—making it seem like the designs came from different people rather than a unified team.
To overcome this, we introduced intentional regrouping sessions after individual work and added a pre-stakeholder alignment review to ensure coherence before presenting. This shift helped us work more efficiently and show up as a more cohesive unit—especially crucial while juggling four simultaneous site redesigns.
6.2 Key Takeaways
Storytelling strengthens design: A cohesive narrative across the site increases clarity and drives engagement. Framing user flows as stories helped us maintain consistency and highlight Rita Lab’s mission more clearly.
Developer handoff is continuous: I learned that implementation isn’t a final step—it’s a collaborative relationship. Through regular communication with developers, we ensured our designs were accurately translated and technically feasible, all the way to launch.
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