Lessen the ecological footprint of their property

Repurpose and improve their space

Lower their monthly energy costs

Improve the look and appeal of their space

Improve the look and appeal of their space

At first, Bloomspace could work with be schools, office buildings, rooftops, parking lots, industrial warehouses, and small businesses, offering both DIY project support and all-one-one design/build services. 

This initial business model was expansive and unfocused.

Gordon Aster

55 years-old
Developer
St. Paul, MN

• Gordon has a building that is 20% vacant and has to find a way to increase its appeal.

• Environmental buildings are an increasing trend that Gordon wants to get ahead of.

• Gordon needs to lower his building costs while increasing the building income.

We spoke with individuals in environmental architecture, real estate development, and landscaping.

Their professional backgrounds helped us to understand that we should be focusing on corporate spaces and that clients are more interested in the aesthetic and financial benefits than the environmental ones. This changed how we would present the information on our site, through emphasizing cost-savings and aesthetic opportunities, and by adding an Education section to help clients learn about the environmental benefits.

User Insights

A commercial property owner in an urban center with a cold climate struggles to pay monthly energy bills, worries about his business’s carbon footprint, and feels like his building needs more appeal and amenities.

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Research and interviews revealed a historically high volume of empty office spaces. It also showed a considerable ROI on green infrastructure investments, improved public image, and improvements to mental health in offices incorporating plant-life.

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A service that assesses spaces to curate an eco-friendly architectural rehabilitation strategy would help save on monthly costs, lower carbon footprints, take advantage of tax incentives, shifting public option towards green architecture, support local ecosystems and biodiversity, supplement building amenities, and increase property value.

“There’s a historic amount of office vacancy, especially in cities.”

“Most people are looking to keep up with their neighbors and make it look cute.”

“Clients think they know what they want but the purpose of the designer is to design something livable, legal, and a good space.”

Primary colors

Secondary colors

Buttons

Mobile page design

User Testing

Since the site was shaping out to be information-based and not action or task-oriented, we opted to center user tests around locating and digesting information.

Task 1: What page do you think you'd find information about bloomspace's methodology? - 63% success rate
Task 2: What's rainwater harvesting? - 75% success rate
Task 3: Apply to Bloomspace and land on the Personalized Proposal Page - 63% success rate

Based on user testing and feedback, we needed to make some changes to our prototypes, including:

• Strategize section names and content

• Add context to content

• Styling updates

• Renaming site sections

• Added sections to give more context

• Added more instructions and descriptions

• Rearranged sections to reflect a realistic renovation process

• Integrated information about individual project proposals

• Added a consultation option

• Overhauled styling like button colors, page designs, heading font choices, and more.

“Methodology could belong on any page.”

“Are all of the application questions required?”

“It should be more interactive?”