Dorson Community Foundation:
Leading UX Research
A nonprofit and educational organization.
UX Research for a responsive website redesign.
What's in Store
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Problem Space
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Project Overview
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Discovery & Audit
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Define
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Delivery & Post-Launch
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Next Steps
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Project Overview
What's the Issue?
Donations are not as regular as they have been in the past.
Website user interface is not up-to-date with modern designs and best practices.
Who's on the Team?
Key Stakeholders
UX Researchers
Led by Danielle Martin
UI Designers
Software Engineers
Discovery & Audit
Heuristics Evaluation
Main Areas of Focus:
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Credibility
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Findability
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Communication
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Accessibility
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Delight
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Learnability
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Competitive Analysis
​Through Competitive Analysis of Dorson's services and their current site, we overall found that Dorson is on-track with the type content and visual design in comparison to its competitors.
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However, they could do the following to stand out and improve their overall user experience:
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Improve the findability of their content.
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Clarify their organization's credibility through their visual design.
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Click image to enlarge.
Define
Through our interviews,
we found that users overall...
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Donate to make an impact that align with their values.
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Want to make sure their donation goes directly to the cause.
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Support organizations that have a clear vision and are transparent about records and results.
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Think there are right and wrong ways to receive communications from an organization.
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Need to be able to trust the organizations or websites enough to donate.
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Want the donation process to meet expectations with no surprises.
User
Criteria
We shared a screener survey with Dorson donors and our networks to find individuals who donate regularly to either Dorson or general non-profit organizations so we would interview and test with relevant and current users.
User Interviews
I led the team in the development of our discussion guide for our user interviews. We focused on the user's past experiences donating to a non-profit or Dorson in the past year, positive and negative. We also focused on what impacts their donations in terms of whether they donate, how much, how frequently, if COVID-19 has made an impact in any way, and more.
Persona
From those interviews came Chevelle.
While Chevelle needs to have a tangible outcome to her donation and an expectable donation process, she has pain points around the communications from organizations and trusting organizations with poor design or transparency.
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Problem Statement
Chevelle is looking for an educational nonprofit to support in her community. She needs to be able to look at their site and think, "Wow, this seems incredible. I want to learn more before I donate."
How might we help Chevelle ensure she is donating to an organization that matches her values and makes an impact?
Develop
Design Studio
I co-led our UX Research and Design team with our project manager in a design studio with stakeholders for Dorson Community Foundation on the redesign of both the donation process and the website.
Below is an example of our design studio session for the layout of the desktop landing page.
Medium-Fidelity Usability
Since our users reported in their interviews that they donate through their desktops and through organizations' desktop breakpoints of their sites​, our team focused on the desktop breakpoint of the Dorson website for wireframes and usability testing.
Scenario
You heard about this nonprofit organization called Dorson Community Foundation from your friend. All you know is that they're an educational nonprofit in NJ.
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Tasks
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You want to learn about the people behind Dorson Community Foundation. How would you do that?
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How would you find out the impact of different donation amounts to Dorson?
Results
Task 1
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All 5 users successfully completed the task.
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However, 2/5 users wanted to have quicker access to "Team" rather than needing to scroll down the page to complete the task.
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Task 2
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3/5 users successfully completed the task.
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2/5 users went to different pages to try to find this information.
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Delivery & Post-Launch
Live-Site Usability &
Quality Assurance
After taking our data from the last round of testing and turning it into design edits, our software engineering team with UX and UI design training brought our designs into code.
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Afterwards, the UX Research and Design teams worked closely with the software engineering team for quality assurance (QA) testing: making sure the right buttons went to the right places, the interaction designs were accurate, and all content was correct.
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When QA testing completed, we jumped right back into our user research and conducted more usability tests with the same scenario and tasks.
Scenario
You heard about this nonprofit organization called Dorson Community Foundation from your friend. All you know is that they're an educational nonprofit in NJ.
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Tasks
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You want to learn about the people behind Dorson Community Foundation. How would you do that?
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How would you find out the impact of different donation amounts to Dorson?
Next Steps
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Work with software engineering team to continue QA testing as neeeded.
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Software engineering team to continue building out pages that are not yet live for Dorson's upcoming program launches!
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Continue to monitor live website for click rates on Donate, time spent on site, site abandonment, and overall impact on regular donations.