1 Collecting in Notion

I first wanted to collect all the information from the book that I wanted to display on the website. For each page I wanted on the website, I made a page in my Notion. Why Notion? Well, because:

• I am familiar with Notion and it is faster to build the structure there than in a website builder

• I could give the set of Notion pages to the Notion community and might reach new interested people

• The set of Notion pages would be the MVP - Notion users could easily use it already and other users also, they would just have to get familiar with how to use the questionnaires

• That way, I could have all the copy ready and pre-organized

• That way, I would always be clear on the information architecture.

I had previously used Notion for other things connected to Ayurveda and TCM, such as making a database with 318 foods assigned by their Doshas (Ayurvedic metric), element and thermal properties (TCM metrics) and nutriment type (such as grains, vegetables etc.)

2 Information Architecture

My first plan was to keep the website super simple. It should contain a landing page which led to the different phases, where the user can find instructions on what to do in this phase.

When I started collecting most interesting, however, I added two constitution questionnaires and several sub-pages in the phases, so it ended up being a bit more complex than initially planned.

In order to stay clear on the structure and maybe discover where better Information Architecture is needed, I made a sitemap.

The sitemap is likely to be iterated, if user testing shows there’s a better way to organize the pages.

The information architecture in the book works as the main determining factor of my sitemap.

3 User Research

To get clear on who I was actually designing for, I made some fictional personas. By getting into my user’s heads I came up with some core pain points and hypothetical solutions.

I also put some thought into which features the website would need to be different from the book (and hopefully more helpful).

5 Reaching out to the author

After I had built the start page in Wix, I reached out to the author. I described my intend to her.

I was curious if she might appreciate an online presence of her gut healing program. There might me a way of collaborating, for example by utilizing her existing marketing channels, I hoped.

Unfortunately, she never replied, so I was in need of a new mini business plan!

Building with Super.so (and Notion)

Super.so is a no-code website builder that integrates specifically with Notion. It allows you to turn any Notion page into a website and even provides a custom domain. You can choose certain properties to edit your website pages such as font and color theme. This tool is less powerful than for example Wix in the sense that you can’t reshape the layout a lot or add effect, mouseovers or animations. but it is super quick and clean and especially so helpful to me as I already had all the content I wanted on my website in Notion!

7 Tally.so

Then I discovered Tally, which is a Notion-integrable form creator and free of charge. For the third time now, I took the time to adopt all questions of the Dosha questionnaire as well as the gut-IQ-test into a form.

Wait what - am I… done??

Creating the questionnaires was pretty time-consuming, but once I was finished and embedded them into my course, I was suddenly out of chores. I reassessed and found that I could basically publish…? It didn’t feel ready at all. I still wanted to add more interactivity and maybe add some extra challenges per phase (addressing the psychological side of a detox program).

But then I thought:

Is it finished? No.
Is it an MVP? Umm, yeeah, I guess.

So let’s somehow start getting it out there, get some more eyes on it, collect feedback, iterate.

So that’s what I’m going to do.