Phase 2) Secondary Research of the Workplan covered LIFT Circle Brand Guidelines that included logo, font variations brand colours and mission. The team looked at the client’s current social media and web presence as well as educational materials on Economic Reconciliations. Similar businesses entities and competitors for instance in the BIPOC space were looked at for their directory type of implementations.

Current Public Focus: Me Too, Black Lives Matter, Reconciliations and BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Colour), Recognizing the continued impact of Canada's Residential Schools

Indigenous Workforce: A $27.7 billion annual boost is a possibility for Canada's economy if equal economic opportunities are given to the country's Indigenous population, says a recent report. (The National Aboriginal Economic Development Board)

Value of Mentors: ... most successful tech founders had been mentored before they succeed. For instance, Mark Zuckerberg (facebook) was mentored by Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was mentored by Mike Markkula (an early investor and executive at Apple). And Eric Schmidt mentored Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google.

The indigenous focus has brought about indigenous ventures more business to business oriented rather than business to customer.

It's a space that LIFT Circle Business Directory could occupy. Current indigenous directories are not so comprehensive and in particular not at the level of say Etsy's online marketplace of businesses.

Black Canadian Designers website demonstrates a good usable site for customers looking for black Canadian designers. At least in part a source to emulate and in particular their partnership with the DHL delivery service.

The Prototype screens were designed with what is seen as common functionality for website directories with account and member functionality.

To get a sense of specific website functionality and navigation three scenarios were decided on to storyboard:

1) Potential Shopper:

Jason, is looking for a cycling helmet and other cycle gear for the summer. Since he's recently been reading quite a few online articles concerning indigenous reconciliations his google search for his gear brings up the 'Lift Circle Collective Business Directory' as one of the results.

2) Member Registering:

Audrey, has a local bakery, sandwich and catering business that's doing well, that she's thinking of expanding, but would like to get a higher profile. She's always thought that as an indigenous woman working together with other like minded indigenous women entrepreneurs would be a great support and possibly provide a platform for focusing on their successes and what they have to contribute to society as a whole.

3) Admin:

Sierra, is glad that the 'Lift Circle Collective Business Directory' is getting new members for its listings and is getting used to her new admin duties maintaining the site.

Homepage: Specific laptop and mobile homepage screen size prototypes for potential customers to navigate to LIFT Circle member business websites

Homepage - Laptop

Homepage - Mobile

Member Registration: Potential indigenous women business owners who'd like to be listed on the LIFT Circle Business Directory.

Member Registration - Laptop

Member Registration - Mobile

LIFT Admin: For the LIFT Circle Directory administrator to approve/vet registrants, maintain business categories, carousel, member and featured member lists. As well, with more involved tasks on the Laptop in member profile maintenance to update thumbnail or carousel image for instance.

LIFT Admin - Laptop

LIFT Admin Dedicated - Laptop

LIFT Admin - Mobile

LIFT Circle colour palette from their Brand Guidelines were used for accents.

A neutral aesthetic was decided upon which we felt would be better at showcasing the LIFT directory of businesses and communicating the LIFT mission to amplify, celebrate and connect Indigenous people for a sustainable, thriving and better world.

Furthermore, having a dominant neutral tone was thought less likely to be off-putting since for instance using the accent colours as dominant colours could for instance be seen as either too feminine for certain website visitors or masculine if using a strong navy blue or black.

We decided to use the Maple Seed pod in the background type of relief as a nod to the LIFT logo for continued branding.

Looking in more detail:

We have the Main Navigation at the top and footer at the bottom both standard practices.

In the header banner a carousel to showcase businesses in the directory to get potential customers interested in registered business members of the site. Images would be vetted by the LIFT admin for resolution and required dimensions.

Under the lift logo "Indigenous LIFT Collective is a comprehensive index promoting our vibrant community of indigenous women owned businesses." Tells you what the site is about.

Under that we have a quote from Buffy Sainte Marie “Native issues are almost never just Native issues. Native issues are human issues.” An interesting quote which is a meant to be a sort of feel good moment for the potential user for being on the site.

Further down on the homepage:

Our team designed for Category and Proximity filtering.

Presumably a potential customer would want to narrow list of businesses they are interested in shopping at and in particular how far the physical location of the business would be important to them.

On hovering over a given business thumbnail:

A Business Preview pop-up screen would appear to give specific location, hours of operation, contact info and bus website link.