Wise Pool is a pool and spa company that designs and builds beautiful custom pools for their clients in Houston, Texas. The company had a website that was outdated and using Flash technology, so it wasn’t visually appealing and was frustrating to use. Wise Pool came to Standard Beagle in need of a redesign and I was the lead UX Designer on the project. Wise Pool needed a clean design that was very simple and showcased a beautiful gallery of their pools and spas.

I designed two styles guides for the website – one that portrayed a modern, clean, and sophisticated feel and another that portrayed a friendly and trustworthy feel. Color choices were made in mind of the end user and how they would psychologically impact users. The texture choices were made by choosing patterns that would attract attention in a subtle way. The images I chose were aesthetically pleasing to the eye and the typography chosen was to give a very simple and minimalistic look.

Our team began by doing user research of the top pool company websites around and why these websites were ranked so highly. As most people in Texas know, pool builders are almost a dime a dozen with the hot summer heat putting Texas residents in the water as much as possible. We found through our research that the most successful pool companies were ones whom gave their clients personal attention by communicating well throughout the process while showing integrity, and providing cost effective quality service.

I began to layout the navigational design in sketches and layout the features I would need to incorporate into the wireframes during this process.

When designing the wireframes for this site I had unity in mind as I wanted the simplicity of the design to be apparent with how all of the elements on each page visually and/or conceptually belonged together. The UI needed to have balance of unity and variety to avoid a dull or overwhelming design. I also used a nice amount of white space to make the site look very clean and not take attention away from the image usage, which was what we wanted the focus of the design to be. The hierarchy of the homepage was very important so I began with the image slideshow, then a widget area with a very short amount of content showcasing whom Wise Pool is, then showcased the galleries of work, and ended with a call to action widget area. The hierarchy of the page was perfect for what the client wanted in the design.

After the designs were complete the developers began the custom WordPress development process. The site we delivered was clean, minimalistic, and beautiful while creating a dominance around the gallery of work, which was the most important element.