One Community: Website Redesign to increase volunteer engagement and visibility

Winter 2021

Develop for Good is an intercollegiate 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that pairs, trains and supports student volunteers as they develop technical product solutions for nonprofits. Some of our most notable partners include UNICEF, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. Learn more at https://www.developforgood.org/!

Project Summary
The current One Community website is hard to navigate, resulting in low online engagement. This project required a complete website redesign — with the optimal website-building tool — for One Community. The design team added new features that are approved by the client — such as a volunteer page, events page, and organization highlights. The new website includes all information from the previous website and encourages website visitors to get involved with One Community. The redesigned website is also easy for the One Community board to edit and maintain.

The Challenge
The project challenge was to redesign the current One Community website to address the following pain points

For full view: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lV3uN3w=/

• unclear organization objectives
• difficult to navigate the website
• unclear/difficult website functionality and user flow
• difficulty in understanding website content and purpose

One Community targeted users were extremely diverse in age, gender, and background:

• Young volunteers (children, high schoolers, teens, etc) — need for clear involvement opportunities and contact information, need for clarity in organization information to understand objectives and purpose
• Community members(patrons greatly varying in age) — need for user friendliness and clarity in organization information in order to navigate the website
• Ethnically/Culturally diverse members and audiences — need for understanding One Community values and feel welcomed
• Partner Organizations and Businesses — need for clear involvement opportunities and contact information

The Team
Vanessa Perez-Robles, Dartmouth College’ 23

Ankita Bantey, University of Texas at Dallas ‘22

Kaelyn Ong, Stanford University’ 23

Fiona Wong, University of California San Diego’ 20

Nia Page, University of California San Diego’ 21

Chae Bin Park, Georgia Institute of Technology’ 21

Our Solution
The project includes two broad phases, design and implementation. The design process started from low fidelity sketches and finished with a final user interface. The designers then used Wix to implement their creative features into a new One Community website. To maintain an iterative design process, the team:

• Provided a weekly deliverables, clarifications, or ideas to the client to get feedback
• Conducted user research through interviewing current One Community members and a broad set of users
• Targeted redesign so the new website would be easy to navigate as more components are added
• Conducted usability testing
• Completed design sprints by the scheduled deadlines throughout the project timeline

Within design sprints, the team conducted user interviews to understand the needs of current One Community members. Designers created an interview guide and conducted usability testing to get feedback from One Community members throughout the project. Design tools like Miro boards, prototype personas, a style guide, and a functioning Figma demo were crucial to implementing an effective redesign.

Impact
Usability testing was essential to confirm that the well-researched design choices were effective for users. By conducting iterative prototype testing, the team found that users find more clarity about One Community’s mission in the redesigned website. The final round of usability testing also showed that users found more opportunities to engage with One Community’s events and social media in the redesigned website.

Helpful images

Before: https://www.one-community.org/

After: https://onecommunityvision.wixsite.com/one-community/about-us

User Research:

Our Impact
Usability testing was essential to confirm that the well-researched design choices were effective for users. By conducting iterative prototype testing, the team found that users find more clarity about One Community’s mission in the redesigned website. The final round of usability testing also showed that users found more opportunities to engage with One Community’s events and social media in the redesigned website.

Check out the demo at
https://onecommunityvision.wixsite.com/one-community/about-us