My first landing page as a junior designer
By: Tobiloba Ajimosun
Tags: Landing Page Design, First Post, UI Design, UX Design, Product Design

Phew! This would be my first publication on product design or anything design, and I’m here to do one thing; validate the popular saying that “if you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product (in this instance, landing page design) you’ve launched too late”.

To be honest, I was embarrassed at first, and with multiple iterations, I AM SUPER PROUD OF MYSELF!! (Raise a glass with me, my friend 🥂)

This publication is to walk you through how I did it, so you can too!

To begin with, I joined the amazing team @rewriteagency (as a product design intern) this month (April 2021), and that is the best decision I made in Q1 2021 (more details on that soon 😉), I had zero agency or work knowledge of product design but they took a bet to hire me after rigorous interview sessions.

My first task upon joining the team was to work on the landing page for a platform where HRs and recruiters can quickly validate the academic credentials of a potential hire with all universities in Nigeria.

The Process

Conduct Heuristic Evaluation

I started by conducting a heuristic evaluation of platforms offering similar solutions. The point of this was to learn how they went about communicating the idea of their product on their landing page.

Tip: When there is little or no time to do user research, the next best thing is this methodology. Want to learn how to do this yourself? Read here.

2. Validate ideas & Gather Inspiration

After noting the trends of the UX of competitor websites and what they lacked, it gave me some ideas that need to be validated or proved, trust a designer to go to Pinterest & Dribble to search for UI inspirations, keeping in mind the UX flow I want to implement.

3. Low-Fidelity Screens

Finally, I got into Figma to create low-fidelity prototypes, it was a struggle because I wanted a “perfect low-fi” to send to my boss.

An image of the 6 different drafts for the low-fid pages

My kind boss realized I was spending so much time on the low-fid pages and he said one single thing that changed my mind as a product designer, as a young and aspiring designer I am sure it would help you too.

Best advice ever!!

4. High-Fidelity Screens

After getting approvals to move to the hi-fid screens, it was no longer about just how I wanted the UX flow to be now but now the visual aspect of the website.

First draft: The buttons though. Lol

The buttons were too big and the texts were not standard sizes. I’m grateful for my team lead and Jo’Bobo (senior designer) who helped me see why the button sizes or texts wouldn’t work. They pointed me to material.io to read up about the standard of text fields, buttons, etc.

After research, iterations, dealing with imposter syndrome, and many iterations behold my first landing page design.

Please raise your glasses!! 🥂

Web View

Mobile View

Things I learned during this project:

It is not enough to have ideas, be willing to put in the work to bring them to life. That’s where the real work is. With all thy learning, learn material design standard for everything, because, for every potential design situation that exists, Material Design likely has a comprehensive set of rules for how to handle it. To learn more on “Why Material Design”. Click here. There is always room for improvement.

Thank you for reading! Follow me to follow my journey from intern to senior designer 😉. Say hello to me on Twitter & LinkedIn