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WEBSITE REDESIGN | UW Web Design Intern, FALL 2017
United Way Of Greater Lafayette
Lafayette, IN
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Role: Intern User Experience Designer, Web Designer/Developer & Photographer
Deliverables: Redesigned Website, Photographs of Victory Campaign Press Release
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United Way is a non-profit organization that works with local offices around the U.S. to partner with communities and improve the overall social environment. I was part of the Marketing and Communications group during the fall of 2017, working on a web site overhaul.
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Mentor: Ebony M. Barrett-Kennedy
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Project Piece Overview:
This project expanded my skills in a variety of ways. These skills were developed in the moments of stepping in as a user experience expert, web and graphics designer, as well as the photographer and assistant to both the Event Planner and Head of Marketing and Communications.
1 | RESEARCH & EVALUATION
United Way utilizes OneEach Technologies to create and manage their website. They realized a new, fresh and updated look was what they wanted but didn’t understand what would be necessary to manage the immense amount of information they needed to regularly communicate to those in the community.
After analyzing each design option available to them on OneEach as a United Way office, It was important to consider them as a whole, with the entire United Way organization, to understand how they might fit in with the other chapters around the country. It was also important to consider how they might stand out and reach out to their unique community in the best way possible. I looked to understand the Greater Lafayette United Way - its goals, motives, and most crucial moments in the community.
A meeting was held after top design options were hand-picked, and the final design was chosen. A date to have all content switched overnight was determined. Additional “reach” features were also determined - a twitter feed, a blog post feed, and a calendar/event notification feed.
2 | INFORMATION CONDENSATION (Iteration 1)
As the switch date rapidly approached, it was my responsibility to get as much information pared down in the best possible way. This had not been done in years. There were many duplicate, irrelevant and out of date pages that could be combined or deleted to create a better overall experience. On other pages, there were misleading buttons or pictures that appeared clickable and pages or forms that needed to be hidden throughout the year, until the time they were needed.
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The Community Commitment to Education Page is a great example that needed to be reworked a bit to accomplish a better overall understanding. On the left, you can see what the page used to look like and on the right, the redesigned content I provided.
3 | SWITCH OVER & DEBUG
The entire website had our design choices implanted overnight, thanks to OneEach. While the interface looked better, it now had bugs in the code, and still needed to be shrunk, in terms of content and pages. There were features missing, and some were relocated to ensure the website still had functionality similar to the previous design.
4 | INFORMATION CONDENSATION (Iteration 2)
All duplicate pages had been eliminated (pre-design switch) but there were still several pages where the information and content was not easily consumable, due to outdated graphics. Manual information re-configuration was done, working in HTML and CSS, within the online editor, per each page. This portion of the redesign taught me a great deal about patience and working with a variety of technologies and an awareness of outside companies, partners and employees and their respective roles.
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The Union Counseling Page is a great example of a graphic that, if slightly re-designed, could help ease understanding and possibly increase attendance rates. On the left, you can see what the page used to look like and on the right, how I redesigned the content.
5 | RE-BRAND
After debugging, I also worked on asset recreation and incorporation. Those things happened prior to the switch, as we knew base colors, but it was also an excellent choice, in some instances, to wait until after the switch, to ensure brand standard compliance. New buttons were made to better fit the new “image” of the website and graphics were made to show progress on the Victory Campaign.
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Photos were also included on banners of the new site to better feature the wonderful work and people behind United Way of Greater Lafayette. I even had the opportunity to take photos that were used for press releases and on the website. Below you can see a few of my photos from the 2017 Victory Campaign Press Release.
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In addition to asset creation and incorporation, one of my roles for the duration of this project was continuous updating of events, the calendar and various pages across the website.
