REBRANDING PROJECT.
SPRINT MERGED WITH T-MOBILE
PROBLEM
Sprint has joined T-Mobile in 2020. After some time we realized that we have not been effectively communicating to the Sprint base customers and telling them a coherent narrative about how the merger is progressing, that TMO will be their carrier, and why it will meaningfully improve their experience.
• 70% of Sprint customers didn’t know that T-Mobile bought Sprint
• Sprint customers are not aware of the benefits they get from being T-Mobile
GOAL
Provide Sprint migration design language framework and guidance.
Help to make the transition for legacy customers who still rely on brand cues and need better visual assistance in their path the migrate.
MY ROLE
My role as a Design system designer was to develop usage guidelines and create a visual language for the Sprint.com website and MySprint app.
Introduce the design elements and brand principles of T-Mobile, while still keeping the feeling of the Sprint brand so the user feels comfortable.
APPROACH
Step 1: Design exploration
First, we needed to understand the meaning of the Sprint brand and how it is represented. What Sprint brand means for Sprint customers.
Since I wasn’t closely familiar with the Sprint brand I started with website and app audit. The audit helped me to understand the main elements that represented the Sprint brand:
• Dominant of brand yellow color
• Logo
• Iconography
• Typography, font
• Imagery
Step 2: Brand decisions
The next step was to decide what elements of the Sprint brand we will keep and which ones will be replaced with the T-Mobile brand elements.
Colors:
Our goal is to make the smooth transition for the sprint customers and make this transition comfortable. Since Sprint brand color and TMO brand colors are contrasting colors, we decided to create a separate color palette only for the sprint migration pages and make it more neutral with an integration of the small amount of the TMO magenta color, so user won’t be surprised with the radical change of the color.
Logo:
We’ve tested different logo options for the Sprint transition pages:
Option 1: TMO logo. As a result, customers were confused about why there is a TMO logo when they are visiting the Sprint site (even if we have a couple of banner information convene this information).
Note: 70% of Sprint customers didn’t know that T-Mobile bought Sprint
Option 2: Sprint is now T-Mobile, combining neutral colors and magenta, but research showed that the dominant Magenta color makes the Sprint logo text less visible to customers.
Option 3: Sprint is now T-Mobile - with a yellow fan. We achieved a balance between the two brands and decrease customers' confusion.
Imagery:
T-mobile and Sprint imagery had common brand image characteristics, where the human connection is in a central stage. The decision was to replace all Sprint imagery with T-Mobile images, which allowed also the integration of other T-Mobile brand elements, such as colors.
Why we couldn’t make some changes
Before making the migration brand decisions we should have considered not only the brand elements but also the level of effort of the developer teams in order to implement those changes. One of the examples where we needed to sacrifice the brand decision is the typography.
Changing the typefaces wouldn’t be an easy task for developer teams since at the time they haven’t used the Token system, all typography elements were hardcoded.
BUILDING A UI KIT
When the main brand decision was made, reviewed, and approved by the leadership, the next task was to create an extensive suite of patterns and components, accounting for all states and scenarios- creating a comprehensive UI kit for our team to use.
We’ve separated the process into two phases:
1. Developers reference the UI kit in order to update the existing website pages. The updates would apply only to the foundation-level elements.
2. Designers reference UI kit in order to build new migration pages. For this phrase, I needed to build reusable components, such as form fields, modals, banners, etc. Those components followed the T-Mobile visual language.
New Sprint UI kit, Adobe XD
RESULTS
Main foundation elements were updated as well as new pages were built based on the new visual guidance, which improved customer satisfaction and decrease any confusion around Sprint migration process.
