Sunshine Silver
Mining & Refining
Sunshine Silver Mining & Refining is a U.S.-based silver company focused on high-grade, large silver deposits in geopolitically stable jurisdictions. The company’s flagship asset is the Los Gatos District, including the Cerro Los Gatos Mine in Chihuahua, Mexico.
MY ROLE
• Userflows
• User Testing
• Information Architecture
• Wireframing
MY ROLE
• Prototyping
• UI Design
• Visual Design
THE CHALLENGE
For Sunshine Silver Mining & Refining everything from the marketing site, to the mobile app, to the investor portal used a slightly different style guide which resulted in a confusing and fragmented experience. In some cases, design patterns were not implemented as well as they could have been which led to frustrated customers and investors. When you are dealing with this much capital in precious metals, your audience expects a consistent, complete experience. My task was to revisit the information architecture for the marketing site as well as the investor portal to create a cohesive experience on desktop as well as mobile platforms and to completely overhaul the UX/UI design system.
THE PROCESS
Research
From the initial research, I found that they had two different areas that needed the focus 1) a reimagined investor portal where people can log in to check on NYSE rates and market values of precious metals and 2) create a complete overhaul to the user experience on the marketing site to drive more people to register and become an investor.
Stakeholder Interviews
Sunshine Silver Mining had previously done some of the stakeholder interviews before I started on the project. I dove into the research but still felt like there was something missing. I reached out and conducted a couple of follow-up interviews via the phone with some of their key stakeholders as well as my product manager.
Personas
The Sunshine Silver Mining team shared their existing user research with me. Primary users are typically leaders within an investment company—usually with 10+ years of professional experience managing a team in the precious metals industry—who make monthly or quarterly investing decisions. These are a few of the personas that we created below.
Information Architecture
The IA is organized around the new Investor’s portal page and their major features. While I kept the existing major features (or what I consider the essential features on the page), I added minor features that would help the user get the most out of the portal. The hierarchy below includes new and existing major and minor features.
Ideation & Wireframes
To approach the Sunshine Silver Mining redesign with a fresh perspective, I explored interactions and organization of connectors while still focusing on the key values: providing better guidance and clarity in the portal and preventing user errors on the front-end website.
In collaboration with the Product Manager, I explored iterations in columns, hierarchy, and data placement. The strongest explorations maintained the original one-column design because of space and the information that it allowed.
Prototyping
I decided to proceed with usability testing with the strongest set of wireframes, which maintained the original one-column design with small sidebars for call-outs because of space and information that it allowed. I conducted user testing on my low-fidelity prototype in InVision to see how users would complete certain tasks once they were given some context. I conducted my testing with individuals similar to my personas that had used some variation of an investor portal before.
High Fidelity Designs
The redesign was an opportunity to refresh the company’s branding. Sunshine Silver Mining did not have a strong brand identity beyond its logo. The original website was a dark and confusing design, with numerous colors and mining stock images.
To explore stylistic options, I created four variations of the home page that portrayed mining in a knowledgeable and refreshing way. After getting full stakeholder review and sign-off on the new design direction, I started creating high-fidelity prototypes to present to the product manager and client stakeholders.
Visual Design & Style Guide
The first iteration of the design system was created in less than 3 weeks by myself juggling multiple projects at the same time. With that small foundation, I was able to create sweeping changes and introduce usability improvements to virtually every site and portal area. Being responsible for building a system from scratch has shown me the depth of thinking involved in crafting each small piece, and how doing all this thinking upfront will save the team so much time later down the road!
RESULTS
A fresh, new take on the investor portal and front-facing website for this internationally know mining company
It’s always exciting to watch a product grow and change as we learn more about our customer’s needs. Sunshine Silver Mining started out with a basic brochure website. With every design sprint, there have been more features developed to add to this new brand from an investor portal and soon to come partner login portal. I enjoyed researching and creating a more accurate representation of the product and portal available today.
Working together with the Sales, Engineering, and Marketing teams, I was able to pinpoint what our target users’ needs were for Sunshine Silver Mining. The personas and information architecture helped tremendously in focusing on the essential information and incorporating them into the creative vision. I needed to make sure that ALL of our new products and services are accounted for. It is difficult to understand a product when there is no online resource for what you are being sold. Furthermore, I needed to communicate our team’s core values across the site: trust, authenticity, curiosity, value & impact, and happy team = happy investors.