Stakeholder Objectives
- Increase signups to the NAFC's newsletter
- Design idea: make the newsletter very accessible
- Design note: make the newsletter feel like a bonus, not a burden
- Increase donations
- Target users: frequent users
- Restructure their Information Architecture (aka “IA,” the structure of their content, accounting for future content, iteration, and user needs).
- Express the NAFC's identity in each design
- Their identity: an understanding, compassionate group, that serves as a resource for those in need of incontinence-related information
Target Users (Current Users)
- People with incontinence and those with related conditions
- Their caretakers: family members, professional caretakers, people in their community, etc.
- Healthcare providers (there is a separate portal for Healthcare Providers on the NAFC's website)
Audit: How To Design Solutions
This redesign project started as an audit. The Lead Developer contacted me to audit their website, and to present ideas for design solutions and their implementation to the Development Team.
Solutions
- For the newsletter signup
- The previous design was an in-page signup box with extensive text. To read page content, users had to scroll past this element, on every page. This was overbearing and increased the time to complete many of the users' main objectives, like finding pertinent information.
- The solution: redesign the newsletter signup box as a small sticky component, place it somewhere that is not distracting and can be replicated site-wide. Make it visually inviting, by clarifying its message to express maximum value to users.
- For donations
- Current donation design is an understated button that says "Donate Now" – this left open many possibilities for new ideas. Target users are frequent site-users, who are more likely to accept the organization’s financial needs when they are expressed as being necessary, even critical. This would need to be communicated with honesty and transparency.
- Information Architecture and Navigation
I identified three user pain points that needed to be addressed, pertaining to the structure and navigation for the website. These were:
- The search bar was hard to find, and searches omitted some of the most relevant results (while including some results that were not relevant)
- Navigation menu options were included and ordered based only on analytics. This sounded good on paper, but the experience felt haphazard and confusing. Key elements could have a stronger presence by being organized in distinct sections, rather than being all in one place.
- Components needed clearer designs. Some of the most important CTA's disappeared into background elements, some navigational menus lacked labels or other contextualization, and some links were hard to distinguish from text.
Designs
For Making Donations
Below (top) are the previous designs – these didn't do much to attract donations, even from frequent users. The new designs (below) frame donations more critically, without burdening the overall user experience.
For Signing Up to the Newsletter
The newsletter signup banner now functions as a sticky element, and stays comfortably out of the user's way. However, it is on-hand at all times, and offers "Customized Support." On hover, focus, & click, the banner expands to enable a quick signup process (enter an email and Submit). Feedback was that this appeared helpful, not cumbersome.
Impact
I presented the redesigned components to the Development Team, along with some guidelines for elements' designs and the implementation of these components. I connected each design to the user research which they had provided me. The Development Team is currently building the next iteration of NAFC.org, which has been experiencing consistent growth and is in need of an upgrade to better accommodate their users. The team was grateful for the functionality and vision that I shared with my deliverables, and later told me that my work had also helped "calm down" their development process and increase their team's capabilities.
