Client
Place2Be

Sector
Non-profit
Education

My role
Research
User interface Design
Lead project

Year
2019

OVERVIEW

Place2Be is a children’s mental health charity that works with schools and young people. It provides support and training for pupils and staff at school. After their rebranding, it was necessary to modernise the overall look of their website and improve the user experience according to their new vision and strategy.

As a UI designer, I collaborated with the UX team to participate in the research/discovery phase to produce an interactive prototype. I created several design concepts. During all these meetings, I took part in all the phases necessary to build a website according to the requirements provided by the client.

STRATEGY

Initial state of the client’s website:

- A Low traffic on mobile devices (45%)
- Low number of returning visitors
- A large percentage of traffic is focused on counseling qualifications and placements
- A Lacks the polish and consistency of comparable websites;
- Not a responsive website
- Over-usage of a few templates for pages leads to a monotonous experience and a lack of efficiency in communication
- Content is generally text-heavy and lacks high-quality photography and video
- Navigation is confusing and user journeys lack efficiency
- Forms are outdated, lack clarity, and over-ask information

Possible solutions to gain understanding and build trust would be:

- Use the homepage as your ‘shop window’ with an introduction to explain their mission and tell the story coherently (Understand what they are doing)
- Clearly define the key user’s journey - (Primary and secondary users goal)
- Improve functionalities that allow users to filter what they are interested in upfront ( e.g Search functionality)
- Well-structured content pages with engaging key information that’s easy to find
- Improve the mobile experience to facilitate and maximise the online donation

DESIGN

I was involved in the process of UX design. It improves my understanding of how users navigate and what factors influence their decisions.

Understanding wireframes and prototyping adjustments is really crucial to building the new design, which I supplemented with click-ability using InVision. Again, user tests revealed small vulnerabilities in the structure of the user interface, in some formulations and interactions.

Visual LANGUAGE

After a couple of adjustments on the wireframes, I started working on the visual design that was developed by the agency that did the rebranding.

I created a design library to help me in my process of design and bring consistency to the website.

Designing the key pages

I designed the homepage and landing page which are key pages for users first seeing the site. Once accepted by the client, I applied the same design logic using the UI kit I developed.

The new website reflects Place2Be’s identity: ‘Warm and friendly’. Using the ‘Yellow’ from the logo and applied throughout the website with the buttons. By making the donation page stand out and visible on the page we are increasing the number of donations. Seeking to reduce the number of pages by prioritising the information on the website according to the key user journeys we have identified.Going forward content should be driven by the frequently asked questions Place2Be receives and what we know to be the user’s key motivations

This project was particularly challenging due to the high number of stakeholders to satisfy. It helps me understand the life cycle of a digital project to deepen my knowledge of user experience design.