Summary
In 2023, I led a transformative initiative for Locelle's rebrand to BestHuman, overseeing both a comprehensive rebrand and a significant redesign of their user and admin portals. The rebranding transitioned the company from a feminine-focused aesthetic to a neutral, inclusive brand identity, while the platform redesign emphasized simplified navigation, enhanced usability, and future scalability. This effort combined logo exploration, scientific color palette development, strategic information architecture redesign, and a user-centric approach to both admin and customer interfaces.
The Challenge
Brand Challenges:
BestHuman, formerly known as Locelle, was originally positioned with a brand identity focused on supporting women. The pivot to BestHuman aimed to create a more neutral and universally appealing brand, requiring a significant shift in visual identity.
Product Usability and Scalability Challenges:
The end-user portal lacked polish and failed to convey a refined, high-quality experience. Meanwhile, the admin portal evolved in disconnected and unscalable ways as the business transitioned from 1:1 mentoring to group coaching, highlighting the need for streamlined workflows, flexibility, and scalability across diverse user scenarios.
Logo Exploration and Refinement
The rebrand journey began with Logo Exploration, marking the foundational step in redefining BestHuman's identity. I developed several initial logo concepts and collaborated closely with the CEO through an iterative review process. Together, we refined the design until it authentically captured the company's essence and supported its new, inclusive vision.
Brand Color Strategy
A core aspect of the rebrand was aligning with the CEO's vision for a "sage green" aesthetic. We explored initial palettes, mood boards, and sample colors from photos she liked. Through collaborative discussions, we selected both base and accent colors that would form the foundation of the new identity. Each color was carefully chosen to evoke the desired mood and aesthetic appeal.
Developing the Color Palette
To make sure the brand colors worked for software design, I used scientific tools to find accessible color pairings. These tools measure how bright colors appear to the human eye. A full palette was built around the sage green, including accent, surface, and other color variations for design flexibility.
High-Level Goals for the Platform Redesign
In early strategy meetings with the CEO, we defined the primary goals for redesigning the admin and customer portals: build a scalable admin experience capable of supporting 100x user growth while accommodating diverse use cases, such as group coaching and flexible cohort management. For customers, the focus was on creating an intuitive interface optimized for primary workflows while maintaining functionality for secondary use cases.
Mapping the Customer Journey
To align the user and admin experiences, I created a service blueprint that mapped each key touchpoint—from signup and onboarding to daily use and administrative oversight. By visualizing interactions and data flows, we could:
Identify Pain Points and Bottlenecks: Tracking where users and admins spent the most time revealed clear areas for improvement.
Challenge the Information Architecture: Modeling how user properties evolved highlighted which data was essential and guided the refinement of content hierarchy.
Pinpoint Potential Automation: Exposing manual tasks showed opportunities to streamline or automate admin workflows, boosting efficiency.
Information Architecture
After analyzing object types and user flows, I proposed significant changes to the platform's information architecture:
Consolidated multiple user tables into a single user table with adaptable properties for scalability.
Unified mentorship and coaching sessions into a single object type, as their data structures largely overlapped.
These refinements drastically reduced the number of objects admins interacted with, minimized navigation complexity, and enabled a cleaner, more streamlined portal interface.
Admin Experience
The new information architecture enabled significant improvements to the admin experience. Removing almost half of the original navigation tabs minimized complexity and streamlined workflows, making the interface much clearer and more efficient. The updated navigation model, enhanced by BestHuman's emerging design system, resulted in a visually consistent, polished, and operationally efficient platform.
Customer Experience
By creating a design system for the admin experience, we seamlessly applied the same visual language to the customer portal, ensuring consistency across both interfaces. This approach not only enhanced the portal's look and feel but also made it more interactive, cohesive, and delightful to use, resulting in a user-centric platform experience that felt both natural and engaging.
Streamlined Onboarding
The onboarding process was then refined to create a smooth and engaging entry point for users. Existing steps were simplified, friction points were removed to better guide users from initial setup to ongoing platform interaction.
