Brand and product design for Real Human | Bryan Cesar, Product Designer

Brand & product design for Real Human

Example of The Real Human Project web app

Challenge

I was tasked with creating a brand, website, and new product experience concurrently. With only one developer and 12 weeks to our planned Beta launch date, the objective was to align on a brand and build a light-weight experience, fast.

Result

A new brand and product born, and in time for our launch date!
Analytics and participant interviews show that they really like the "feel of it" and found the end-to-end experience easy to use. I'll update with metrics in the coming weeks.

My game plan

1. Assess
Review competitors as well as individuals on the team for their perspective.

2. Align
Bring all data and analysis for RH team alignment on brand and approach.

3. Design
Create materials and product UI as light-weight as possible for immediate use.

The pitch

The Real Human exists to foster human authentic connection, and encourage curiosity. If people are curious they will want to learn about the people around them. Curiosity can lead to empathy and empathy can lead to connection and trust.

Research

I started off with a review of adjacent products in categories across AI, Podcast and Story-telling to identify competitive advantages, common language to inform design decisions. This included a comprehensive SWOT analysis, brand comparison study, and team input for comparison and discussion.

We learned that brands seemed to gravitate toward a "keepsake" consumer experience focused on the individual, or a rewards experience for employees.
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It was important for us to not be "just a time capsule."

Moodboardin'

Concepts were created to get the team aligned thematically.

Logo exploration

My logo exploration expanded in many directions before sharing a shortlist that I feel best captured the feeling of RH. The team ultimately landed on a design meant to convey the idea of unique individuals and their communities, connecting to create a tapestry of our shared stories.

Website

We chose Webflow to build our marketing website so that Development could focus on everything else needed to build a great product.
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Initial design concepts and messaging were tested with some of our early adopters before landing on a winner. A key constraint here was building it in such a way that the majority of our team could update it with relative ease. That meant simplicity over novelty, at least for now.

Breathing life into the AI interviewer

We wanted our AI podcast host, Sam, to feel like an extension of our brand–curious, calm and friendly. The host visual was animated using Rive, my new shiny toy I’ve recently discovered.

The product

In parallel, the team and I worked quickly to decide which tasks should be handled manually for now and which ones would be automated in the experience.

Mapping the experience

I put together an initial discussion board to kick things exploration off. While mainly an async group activity, we would meet regularly to address more challenging aspects. User flows were mapped out before creating Dev-ready screens.

Technical constraints

We found that the interviewer could take awhile to process, sometimes as long as 16 seconds (!!). We needed an loading state between questions where the person didn’t feel that time.

Sharing episodes

Once participants approved their episode, they were given a private episode page as well as an audiogram-style highlight from their episode. Here's an example from Paul Bleier.

Participant feedback

"Real Human was the single best way to meaningfully celebrate our individual experiences, build a trusting environment and naturally create an inclusive, collaborative culture."

- Claire Santamaria, Head of HR, Oxford Properties Group