Website redesign for Stars of HOPE
Stars of HOPE is the world’s largest and fastest-growing healing arts program. Started by New York Says Thank You Foundation in 2007, SOH is pioneering a new paradigm at the intersection of disaster relief, mental health, and therapeutic art.
UX & UI
Research
design system
Timeline: 6 weeks
In order to understand what makes people decide which nonprofit organization to be involved with, I conducted the initial user research with below methods:
Paticipants answered to following questions:
1. Have you volunteered or thought about volunteering before?
2. What social issues are you interested in?
3. What do you know about disaster relief, mental healing, therapeutic art?
4. What do you know about disaster relief, mental healing, therapeutic art?
5. And from where do you receive that information?
6. What makes you decide where to volunteer/donate?
8. What do you consider as success for an NGO?
Key Insights:
To find out how easy/difficult it is for users to find information on the current website. I conducted:
To help me synthesize and articulate what I learned from user research, I created the Persona Lisa. Her goals, needs, frustrations, and motivations will guide me further making any design decisions.
With a better understanding of the users and their pain points with the current website, I started to think:
Backed by the research findings, I presented below changes on the site map to stakeholders. They got immediately on board with these changes.
Click here to see site mapI created 4 scenarios based on SOH's user segments and designed the user flows for school/community/corporate, volunteer, donate, and Box of HOPE kit order. The flow chart helped me better organize the site's information to create journey paths with better user experience. I was also able to identify the key pages I needed for future usability testing.
Click here to see flow chartsWith the restructured IA, I started to sketch out the main pages for the website.
Lacking a design system, the existing experience is not consistent across the current website. In order to improve consistency and allow developers and other designers to collaborate, I built a design system for the new website.
High-Fidelity Prototype
After several rounds of iterations, a consensus was made to use an iteration for testing that balanced both bright color scheme and modern look and feel, examples shown below.
10 people were recruited for a usability test. 5 were unmoderated and 5 were moderated.
Participants were asked to completed tasks based on 4 scenarios: apply for a school project, contribute as an individual, volunteer as an art therapist, and understand SOH's mission as a potential donor.
"Looks nice, minimalist and straight to the point. Stuff is easy to find and paths are clearly defined."
"It's really easy to navigate!"
"Modern, straightforward, and bright. The colors really feel appropriate for the nonprofit's mission."
