Website and Brand Refresh for a Small Nonprofit
I helped Peace Corps Panama Friends modernize their brand and customer experience.
Peace Corps Panama Friends (PCPF) is a membership association of returned Peace Corps Volunteers from Panama. In 2017 a new board came in, injecting fresh energy into the organization. They needed a brand and website that would support their communications and fundraising efforts. A member myself, I volunteered to lead them through a rebrand and website refresh.
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Date: Sept 2017–Sept 2018
Client: Peace Corps Panama Friends
Role: UX Designer
Methods and Tools: Exploratory and evaluative UX research (mixed methods), heuristic evaluation, wireframing, prototyping, facilitation; Sketch, Illustrator
Discovery establishes organizational priorities and user needs
I researched the organization’s strategic and communications goals, developed a “project proposal, and conducted a rapid analysis of the site in preparation for our kickoff call. During the call we discussed the most important design priorities for the site, and the timeline and process. We all agreed we needed more evidence to inform our process, so I conducted a heuristic analysis and held semi-structured interviews with five PCPF members. The interviews were critical in building empathy with users and helping us understand their goals.
Prior to the kickoff call I did a rapid assessment of the website to identify areas of improvement.
I conducted a heuristic evaluation of the major site pages, and annotated issues to communicate effectively with the board.
From findings to design priorities/design brief
I reviewed call notes from each interview, giving myself enough time to absorb the findings. I did thematic analysis to capture patterns and distill meaning from the data. Knowing that we would need a design brief to encompass research findings and design priorities, I kept a running sketchnote of the research themes. I formalized this in a design brief and reviewed with the board to confirm our direction.
I did analysis for each interview and synthesize the findings. The main themes that eventually emerged were nostalgia and connectedness.
As I moved through interview synthesis I kept a running sketch of emergent findings. This helped me organize the design brief.
Our final design brief lays out the audiences, design priorities, and major features. This helped us stay grounded for the remainder of the project.
Defining the site map and page goals
Having established the overall goals by way of the design brief, I turned to organizing the site information. We planned to use most of the content from the existing site, so had a good starting point for exploring content organization. Since the project timeline was tight, I pulled together a list of about 30 topics and facilitated a session with two of the PCPF leadership. I created a quick site map to confirm the site organization, and then focused on defining page goals and content for the main pages. As I worked through defining page goals, I sketched alongside to visualize and check my assumptions.
Participants work through a card sorting exercise.
Basic site map to demonstrate hierarchy.
I used the CORE framework to define page goals and content. I sketched wireframes in tandem to visualize how content could pour.
Prototype, validate, adjust
As the page templates came into focus, we hit a snag: we had failed to clarify permissions to use Peace Corps volunteers’ photos on the site, and would need to re-think our imagery-focused approach. In light of that, I shifted my focus to the really critical elements we needed to launch—our MVP—and prioritized those in my page wireframes. I facilitated remote user tests with two PCPF board members to uncover potential usability issues. Each board member performed three tasks on the website, ranging from easy to hard. Following the tests we discussed where they would make more sense.
Wireframes demonstrating placement of design elements
Buildout and launch
Over the course of a week I built the website, working from the wireframes and sitemap, and website copy that the team had edited. The process ended up being a lot of trial and error as I learned to work with Wix's templating tools and content editor. This was my first time building a website end-to-end for a client. Although we needed to adjust our expectations on design polish, the new site offers a solid foundation for improving communication with members and increasing donations to PCPF.