Stand With Owners— Designing a seamless and engaging campaign experience that highlights winners and motivates future participation.
My Role
UX Strategy
Visual design
Prototyping
The Team
Content Strategist
UX researcher
Data analyst
Content Manager
Product Owner
Year
Ongoing 2021- 2025
Overview
TELUS business aimed to drive awareness and participation in its Stand With Owners campaign by improving how small business owners discovered, understood, and engaged with the application experience. The previous site lacked a clear structure, had scattered content, and didn’t highlight the impact of the campaign on past winners. Our work streamlined content, clarified eligibility, and transformed a fragmented experience into a focused, motivating one.
My Role
As the Lead UX & Visual Designer, I partnered with strategy, content, development, and marketing teams to deliver an experience that supported both user needs and business goals. I proposed and designed a new "Past Winners" section that introduced testimonials and success stories, helping build trust and emotional engagement with first-time applicants. I owned the end-to-end design process from research, content architecture, wireframing, and prototyping through to final handoff and QA.
UX Strategy
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Visual Design
|
Prototyping
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UX Strategy | Visual Design | Prototyping |
Outcome
Opt-ins
27,700+
+20% YoY
Entries
12,000+
+55 YoY
Visits
326,000+
+70% YoY
Conversions
19.8%
+14% pts
The Challenge
Users interested in the campaign struggled to discover relevant information about current and past winners, eligibility, and how to apply. The experience needed to showcase the campaign’s legacy while clearly motivating new participation.
Business Goals
Drive higher applications and engagement during the campaign period while reinforcing the TELUS brand’s support for small businesses.
User Needs
Users needed a clear, inspiring path through the experience — from understanding the campaign’s value to feeling confident enough to apply.
The Solution
We designed an intuitive, mobile-first experience that guided users through the journey from discovery to application. Storytelling, simplified IA, and visual hierarchy were used to clarify content and drive momentum.
Research & Discovery
We conducted a content audit, stakeholder interviews, and competitive analysis across similar grant or pitch programs. We also reviewed past pages,analytics and heatmaps from the previous year’s campaign.
Key Insights
Users didn’t understand eligibility criteria quickly.
Application steps were buried or overwhelming.
There was no presence of testimonials or success stories from past winners.
I identified this lack of storytelling as a missed opportunity to build trust. From a UX perspective, showcasing real people and results creates emotional credibility and helps first-time applicants see themselves in the experience.
Design Strategy
We structured the site to follow a natural narrative arc: Inspiration → Clarity → Action. Each page element was crafted to build trust, answer key questions, and guide users toward applying.
A Phased Approach
To align with campaign milestones and maintain user engagement, we designed the experience using a modular content strategy that evolved across four phases:
Phase 1: Launch to Learn
Introduced the campaign, clarified eligibility, and generated interest.
Phase 2: Drive Submissions
Energized design and messaging, sharing tips from past winners to inspire action.
Phase 3: Winner Selection
Modified modules to show the contest closed and maintain excitement for upcoming winner announcements.
Phase 4: Finale
Focused on celebrating winners, highlighting their stories, and reinforcing TELUS’s commitment to small businesses.
Key UX and Visual Decisions
Introduced “Past Winners” section with testimonials, photos, and quotes to establish social proof and humanize the campaign.
Rewrote and reorganized content hierarchy to clarify eligibility and reduce decision fatigue.
Created mobile-first designs to address high drop-off rates and improve accessibility.
Highlighted application CTAs in similar positions to maintain flow and reduce friction.
Final Design
The new experience focused on modular content blocks, bold visual storytelling, and responsive layouts that scale cleanly from desktop to mobile.
Highlights
Homepage with a live countdown, driving urgency and that changes throughout the phases, displaying relevant information.
Multiple scrollable carousels of past winners with brand photography and testimonials.
Accordion-style FAQ and eligibility info for mobile devices for quick reference, and reduced scroll length.
Conclusion
Our redesign of the Stand with Owners campaign created a seamless, engaging experience by dynamically showcasing current and past winners to inspire participation and emphasize continuity. Clear CTAs and intuitive navigation streamlined the user journey, while bold visuals aligned with TELUS’ brand values strengthened storytelling.
Key Learnings
Collaborating with stakeholders highlighted the importance of communicating design decisions clearly, especially when guided by user insights. This open dialogue helped align expectations and build trust throughout the process. This project also reinforced how effective user-first design and clear UX storytelling can drive real results. Bringing forward the voices of past winners helped humanize the campaign and connect with users emotionally.
If I were to evolve the experience further, I’d explore adding micro-interactions, richer animations, push the visual storytelling to further improve engagement.
Thank U, next
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Thank U, next 〰️