LAKES AREA RESTORATIVE JUSTICE PROJECT
Duration:
3 months
My Role:
UX Designer
My Responsibility:
Heuristic Analysis
PROBLEM
The Lakes Area Justice Project is a non-profit organization that focuses on young adults navigating the restorative justice process. They have an online presence but would like to update their website to become easier to navigate for its users and more accessible as well.
The organization’s current website
APPROACH
Initially, I planned to focus on analytics along with the visual design of the website. However after meeting with the client, they noted that they were not using any tools to monitor their analytics. I then made the decision to focus solely on the visual design of the website.
After reviewing the site, some things that stood out to me were the overwhelming amounts of text on each page as well as the inconsistency with the style choices (eg. typefaces and buttons). To add onto that, it didn’t seem like there was an established colour palette in place. There were many instances where colours weren’t being used consistently and did not work from an accessibility standpoint.
PROCESS
Once I had identified the main issues, I went to work on finding solutions. To help the client, I created a style guide that contained typefaces designated for the headers and body texts. The guide also contained a scaled down colour palette with each shade having a purpose. In addition to that, I created a mock homepage that would show how things would look if the proposed changes were implemented.
This style guide was created for the client with the intention of giving them consistent standards to follow on their website.
I chose two typefaces for the website and made sure to go with sans serif choices which would be easier for the user to read. For the colour palette, I took swatches from the current site and narrowed them down to 7 shades that I felt were more brand appropriate. The colours that I ended up keeping were those that were used most prominently on the website and worked cohesively.
I also included examples of components and how they would look with the new colour palette. I made sure to include these for the client to make sure that the components were staying consistent across the site.
After creating the style guide, I created a mock homepage with the changes implemented. The main things that I focused on were consistency and alignment for the home page. Alignment was important because it would ensure that the user would have an easier time scanning the page to find what they are looking for. Additionally, the colour palette was implemented which gave the page more of a cohesive look. New proposed additions were the icons which would replace the carousel on the current page. I chose icons that represented some of the organization’s key values and added text beneath them with a short description. Another addition to the homepage was a Facebook feed which satisfied the client’s goal to keep the users in the loop with what was going on with the organization on a day to day basis.
Before (left) and After (right)
NEXT STEPS
This project was a great experience for me to be able collaborate with a client that is doing impactful work for their community. In terms of what is next, the client will be taking the recommendations and taking them into account when doing their website redesign. The client will also be setting up analytics on their site and they will track it to see if there are any noticeable changes or trends.