A Nonprofit With a Goal to Raise Awareness and Build A Website
I was contacted by the Strong House Foundation, a newly started nonprofit organization, to help them develop brand guidelines to be used on their website and social media.
The Problem
The newly founded nonprofit wanted to develop a website that served their demographic of potential donors and supported a decent user experience.
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This meant designing the site to support actions and users flows such as donation, subscription, and post-confirmation of information submission.
The Situation
3 Weeks
The Team: Marketing Director, Organization Co-Founder, Web Designer
My Role
Visual and UX Designer​ (Web)
The Process
Understanding the Customer Base
First, I wanted to empathize with those who would interact with the business model. I began doing some social media research on Complex Wrestling to understand their customer base.
Within their social media group, members and coaches held events with other professional organizations like Greenway, to raise awareness about wellness within healthcare institutions.
Members also shared achievements of younger members who trained within the Complex Wrestling program.
These members were parents or mentors of the children and teens that were coached within the wrestling program, who were interested in the idea of a nonprofit to support higher engagement and member involvement.
Community Insights
Environment-Based Research
After the initial social media research, I decided to observe and document the business model in person. Community members and tutors would provide educational tools and social activities for the children to engage in.
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It was then that I decided to interview the potential stakeholders or supporters of the organization about why they would want to support a nonprofit that helps children in the community receive better education, improve social growth, and build religious fellowship.
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Interview Results
"I want to support an organization that forwards the teachings of Christ."
"I want my child to be part of a fellowship group with kids his age."
"I believe in the character-building lessons that hard work can teach the younger generation."
Customer "Purpose Mapping"
Given these insights (and many more), I grouped the data I gathered into a chart displaying each of the answers in categories - Goals, Needs, Feelings, and Beliefs.
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This allowed me to better understand what potential donors would want out of the nonprofit program, and how the marketing team and I could better design branding and a website that better presented this information.
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After discussing this diagram with the marketing team, we developed personas that were most likely to represent the audience we wanted to cater to, and would be most likely to donate.
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Initial design prototypes were developed as a result of this research to reflect the potential market demographic.​
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Brand Guidelines
With the creative direction set, the marketing team created a set of creative guidelines for using the primary brand asset.
Next Up: Website Design Guidelines
Next, the organization needed a website so that people could learn more about them. I constructed a site map for the initial lo-fi prototyping phase:
Lo-fi Prototyping: Landing Page Design
I designed the initial concepts for the organization's landing page. My thought process here was to make the top area of the page interactive, including a background video and placing the donation button in a noticeable position on the page.
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Website Functionality: Sliding Pages
I wanted to add a unique slider function to the body section of the page. Once clicked, the slider would brings down a section of info related to the top area. Arrows around the side also would also allow users to switch between content and learn more.
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The Result
I was able to gather some more data about the nonprofit, and from there, create a hi-fi mockup in Sketch to propose the design idea to the stakeholders of the organization. The design would include photography from the organization, and a unique way to show the nonprofit's value proposition to members of the community it served.
Conclusion
While I was only able to design the hi-fi prototypes for the landing page in the little time I had, I can say that working with this nonprofit was a blast. In the end though, the client chose to use GoDaddy's website builder (due to budget limitations.)
Collaborating with fitness coaches, fellowship leaders, and Christian youth allowed me to see social design from a unique point of view and use my expertise to help them improve their outreach to the community.
I did gain a lot of awareness about how I approached my design process as far as user research is concerned, and one thing I wish I would have done better was get more involved with other organizations who might have wanted to donate to the nonprofit in a B2B sense. I feel like I could have gotten more information on how the Strong House Foundation can improve both their customer relations and business relations.
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To learn more about the Strong House Foundation, you can click here.