The non-profit organization All Stars needed a total redesign for their website.
All Stars is a non-profit that helps inner city youth succeed through the power of on-stage performances.
The goal of the website is to generate leads and partnerships with potential donors, partners, and volunteers.
My Role
I was the UX designer & storyteller within a very small team (1 art director, 1 content strategist, a copywriter, a PM).
We conducted stakeholder interviews with donors, staff members, volunteers, and participants.
For the interviews we brought in target users of the site, including donors, staff members, volunteers, and participants. Our findings from this helped shape our strategy for key areas of the site, and gave us insight into how users connect with nonprofits, as well as what they look for on the website.
I created a new information architecture for the site, and in the process corrected one of its biggest problems: shortened the global navigation from 9 items to 5 items
One interesting challenge here was that the client tended to want to put every important item on their top nav. It took some convincing, but we showed them a high-fidelity wireframe prototype of our proposed nav, where a hierarchy was clear even though it was not UI. We explained to them that the more items on the top nav, the less focus any of the individual elements on it receive; thus it has the opposite of the intended effect.
Most importantly, the home page itself would do a lot of the work of conveying the message to users, via images, links, testimonials, and media elements, the nav itself being only a small fraction of what people see on the homepage.
Initial deliverables included a low-fi prototype showing the proposed nav / sitemap, and a home wireframe showing how the key messages would get conveyed through home page elements.
Graphical Sitemap
I worked closely with an art director to help define the content strategy to best serve the user needs.
From the user interviews and early strategy discussions with the client, we quickly realized that in order to fulfill their goal, the website would need a whole new section. It needed a "Get Involved" section, a place for partners of all kinds to find out how they could get involved, beyond writing a check.
I helped to bring this section to life by creating its breakdown of categories, and working with team members on the story and strategy for this section, which then guided the development of the interface.
Our strategy led to the creation of a new section, "Get Involved", composed of three pages: Volunteer, Partner, and Attend an Event. This became the most important section of the site, next to Home and Donate, because it's central to the site's overall goal.
I created a Donate Form where the donation process could be completed in 3 easy steps
View full uncropped image here
I created annotated wireframes for all sections / templates. Here shown is the Events wireframe.
Output & Learnings
The new redesign looks refreshed and easier to navigate, better achieves the organization's goal of generating leads, and still maintains the vibrancy of the All Stars brand.
For me, personally, due to the small nature of the team I had the opportunity to wear more hats in this project than usual and tackle issues bigger than just functional UX. I really enjoyed this. I participated in the high-level strategic thinking that drove design decisions and the story-telling of the experience.
Despite drastic changes in look and feel, structure and nav, the new design manages to retain the positive vibrancy of the brand.
Homepage (this is a cropped snipped of one of the homepage comps)
Last Project