Case study: Third Way Center
The challenge: Redesign website for local Denver nonprofit to better tell their story and engage a newer, wider donor base.
The organization: Third Way Center houses, rehabilitates, and educates young adults in need of alternative resources to address mental and emotional health struggles.
The team: I worked with four team members to complete the project, including Colin Tackett, Katie Schmuhl, Patrick Keating, and Katie Davidson.
My role: I owned all of the UX writing for the redesign and conducted all user research along with Katie Schmuhl.
Tools/Timeframe
This redesign started as a pro-bono project with a local organization and turned into into a 6-month, paid freelance contract to launch the new site.
Sketch
InVision
Miro
WordPress page builder
Google Forms survey
Design studio
Whiteboarding
Telling a powerful story
Image from our redesign of ThirdWayCenter.org’s home page, including my UX writing.
Problem statement: Third Way Center’s previous website was cluttered with irrelevant, outdated information that failed to attract and compel new donors.
The goal: Restructure and redesign the website in a concise and compelling way that tells Third Way Center’s powerful story and expands their donor demographic, strengthening the nonprofit’s longevity well into the future.
Where to start?
My teammate and I wrote questions and distributed a survey to better understand charitable giving habits of the nonprofit’s targeted demographic.
Research discovery phase: Implementing a survey to gain insight on the targeted demographic — millennial young professionals — was critical to understanding what would drive someone to give their time and money to a nonprofit like Third Way Center. I wrote questions along with my teammate Katie Schmuhl and distributed it to our respective networks, capping the survey after receiving 60+ responses.
Findings: The survey was hugely successful in uncovering giving habits and motivators from our respondents.
Contrary to public perception, our survey revealed that millennials are highly incentivized to donate time and money to causes that they care about, with 83.6 percent donating to a nonprofit in the past year.
Of those who donated, 72.5 percent said that they primarily made donations online rather than in person or via phone or mail.
Visusalization of results
Through the survey, we collected both quantitative and qualitative data. The respondents also suggested that the specific issues our nonprofit addressed - homelessness, youth issues, local causes - were important to them.
Transparency is key
One of the major takeaways of the survey was that transparency about where funds are going is fundamental to inspiring donors to give money, yet is so often lacking (as illustrated in this graph).
Research conclusions: In addition to the survey, my team members and I conducted in-person interviews with millennials about their giving habits and motivators. The interviews validated a lot of the survey results, confirming that many millennials are enthusiastic to donate money when they understand how the funds will positively impact causes that they care about.
Translating research into design: One of our biggest design goals was to break out Third Way Center’s standout statistics and facts into bite-sized chunks, paired with iconography and images. While the old site had plenty of information, it wasn’t getting traction because there were too many words and not enough visual appeal. You can’t effectively tell a story if you can’t drown out the background noise.
Problems with the old site
On the original site’s home page, users were overwhelmed with multiple rows of header navigation, some of which were redundant. There was a carousel that moved quickly and featured a graduate’s story, except he appeared much older than a teenager. There were blog updates and treatment stats that were all outdated, and finally a book for sale that did not accomplish the nonprofit’s goal of attracting new donors.
clearing the clutter
Compared to the old site, we wanted to hone in on the nonprofit’s core mission and values, and draw people in by telling the story visually with the right amount of words.
Information architecture: Another important consideration of the user’s experience in website navigation is where & how information is structured. In our first design phase, we focused on the five most essential pages to rebuild first: the home page, ‘What We Do,’ ‘About Us,’ ‘Treatment’ and ‘Get Involved.’ With the findings of our research in mind - that young professionals are motivated to support local nonprofits if they understand whom and what they support - we sought to better tell Third Way Center’s story.
Streamlining navigation: The old site was cluttered with dropdown menus featuring dozens of page links; usability testing found that many users were unsure how to find what they were looking for and had a feeling of overwhelm trying to figure out the navigation. Beyond that, the carousel on the home page was distracting and disorienting. Users could not even tell what exactly this nonprofit organization did or whom exactly they helped.
Design solution: Imagery + bite-sized chunks of copy
Instead of long paragraphs, I kept the copy clean and tight, paired with hero images & iconography created by my team member Colin Tackett. Scannable, small chunks of copy = more likely to be read and understood by users, our testing found.
Transparency: Responding to user needs
We aimed to solve the mystery of where donations go by explaining exactly what $5 to $50 per month could buy for underserved youth.
Happy clients, engaged users: Mission accomplished
Teamwork makes the dream work: In all, our team completed the redesign and launched the new site live after six months, completing several phases and iterations (all in addition to working full-time jobs). It was an incredible opportunity to work together on a freelance project with a nonprofit doing meaningful work, just needing a digital boost for sustained future support.
The UX redesign effort accomplished our client’s goals of streamlining website navigation, telling their story succinctly, and increasing engagement with their targeted user demographic. I feel proud of the robust website we created for a nonprofit with such an incredible impact.