Storyliving

The Challenge

The Walt Disney company was entering into a new line of business by introducing the Storyliving brand. Storyliving communities are planned communities that utilize Disney Imagineering and staffed by Disney Cast Members to provide the unique Disney Hospitality in resident’s everyday life.

Insight

The target demo for this effort included people who are 55+, which would be Gen X. This generation doesn’t want to be labeled as “senior” and still leads a very active lifestyle, many of whom are still in the workforce. Prospective residents are people who have a strong affinity for The Walt Disney company and desires the creativity of the Disney company in their everyday life.

Obstacles:

This project had a fast moving timeline, one that didn’t align with acquiring developers and builders for the homesites. In the beginning, the design strategy had to be flushed out with little knowledge of what the actual product (homes) would like.

The kickoff of the project involved meeting with Product, Content Strategy, Consumer Insights Research, and Design to comb through the user research and demographic information. We then brainstormed what key features the site needed to have to address user needs.

After the brainstorming session, the next thing that I prioritized in lieu of actual requirements around the product was to understand what and how many pages and what type of content we needed to build a successful website for selling homes. Through my audit I determined the site would need:

• Homepage that gives an overview of the Cotino community and amenities

• A Cotino “Story” page - which explains the surrounding community and pertinent resident details

• A Club page to explain the pricing membership for the club and club–specific amenities

• Cotino Bay & Beach page - to provide more information about this amenity to guests and residents

• Towncenter Page - to provide an overview of the offerings at this amenity

I did a competitive analysis across other home builder sites to determine if this content aligned with what was offered on their site and also determined that I’d need to create a full flow for purchasing and customizing homes. There were still outstanding questions for product, so I wrote them on the side of my wireframes to be addressed as we received more information from the developers.

To help make the site scalable, I also designed various information modules that could be implemented and removed as needed. I looked to editorial and travel websites and collegiate websites for inspiration, since those examples serve as exemplars of how to market niche communities as well.

Some of the modules I created in the wireframe stage of the site included:

Experience Modules

This module toggles between imagery and description for the home builds and imagery and description of the community life. It was inspired by college websites and balancing social community marketing with academics.

Prospective Module:

Quotes from Imagineers, Residents, and any additional perspectives to help sell the story behind Cotino and to garner trust with the prospective Residents. Prospects trust and know the Disney brand for media, but not necessarily home development.

By the Numbers Module:

This inforgraphic style module helped give at-a-glance information about Storyliving to prospects who are browsing the site and need to be informed quickly.

I created a variety of plug-and-play modules because the requirements were so ambiguous. This gave the website the flexibility to scale and the team could add and remove information as needed, even in future updates to the website. I also completed wireframes for the Club Page, Cotino Bay Page, and the Town Center. Which will be built in the future development of the website. All wires contain FPO content and copy.

After creating the wireframe for the website, I took a look at the proposed color palette from Marketing for the Cotino advertising. Marketing works with print, which sometimes doesn’t translate to web when you factor in accessibility. I updated the palette to make it web accessible.

Solution:

We worked with a vendor to create the flow for purchasing a home. I created a user flow to help aide the cross-functional teams in understanding what steps prospects take to select a home package plan.

I then designed a user experience that would allow prospects to select home packages through either a lot-first or home exterior first approach, each step informing the inventory on the backend so that the Resident would only be able to select what is available to the them based off of monotony rules.

The Cotino site is now live. There is much more research and design exploration than what I can share here, so please reach out to learn more about this project and the process it took to bring it to life.