Redesigning a Non-Profit Website
TIMELINE: 2 weeks, Team of 3
TOOLS: Google Suite, Miro, Sticky Notes, Paper, Figma
MY UX ROLE / TECHNIQUES:
Heuristic Evaluation, Google Survey, User Interviews, Affinity Mapping, User Flow, Card Sorting, Site Map, Style Guide, Mid-Fi Wireframing, and Usability Testing
BACKGROUND
Our team chose the SLC Arts Council because of a mutual love for the arts and the value of community art programs. The SLC Arts Council is a local organization with a mission to provide public programming and support to the arts. Our challenge was to modernize the website and see how we could create a more user friendly navigation.
RESEARCH
Our first task was to come up with a research plan. Our heuristic evaluation gave initial insights but we needed quantitative data. In the current website design below, there was content overload with no real prioritization.
My research role was to create a google survey to help us understand our users pain points.
MAIN TAKEAWAYS: The data revealed only 25% of our users were familiar with the organization, no users had donated to the non-profit, and just over 50% could find a grant.
The data confirmed our heuristic evaluation frustrations and concerns about the donation button visibility and broken links since non-profits are reliant upon donations.
Upon finishing interviews, we could empathize with our users confusion. The main navigation wasn't intuitive, the site was content rich, and it overlooked prioritization The next step was to visit with a SLCAC stakeholder as to gain a better understanding of the council's grant process.
IDEATE & DEFINE
Our initial research led us to believe our proto persona was a starving artist in Salt Lake City hoping to finance his budding musical career. Upon reaching out to a stakeholder, we changed our focus as we realized the grants offered are largely community based. This was a pivoting research moment for our team as we evolved our user persona, Josh, into a humanities teacher looking for classroom grants.
Our Problem Statement Defined
We observed that users experienced difficulty with navigation. In particular, users struggled obtaining information regarding public programming and participating in the grant process. How might we as designers streamline the offerings made available through the hard work of the council?
PROTOTYPING & TESTING
REDESIGNED NAVIGATION SITEMAP
The user research turned our focus to redesigning the navigation and simplifying the drop-down menu. I created the site map used for our prototype sketches. We designed a more intuitive navigation bar after synthesizing the user data.
We started out sketching our redesign and realized that the photos and lack of chunking led to the user frustration. I created a style guide using the SLCAC existing logo and conducted usability tests on our mid-fidelity desktop and mobile app. Users successfully completed all the following tasks without difficulty which validated our updated design. Our user testing included the following tasks.
- Find the Finch Gallery Operating Hours
- Apply for a Grant
- Make a Donation
FINAL THOUGHTS
