Smile Partners  Website Redesign

Overview

Washington State Smile Partners is seeking to create a new online presence. This Web presence will provide Smile Partners’ clients with the ability to donate to their non-profit, find information on what services Smile Partners offers, research and access educational information on dental hygiene, and other services and opportunities available through the company. The goals of the online Web presence are to:

• Increase visitor frequency and stay on the website
• Increase donations
• Educate visitors on good dental hygiene practices
• Educate site visitors on Smile Partner’s services, company culture, and values

My Role

My role in this project included the following; surveys, user research, personas, competitive/compartatve analysis, scenarios, storyboards, usability testing and contributing to the final site on SquareSpace

Objectives & Goals

To redesign Smile Partners current website to include:

• A more intuitive user flow suitable for technologically challenged users
• Global navigation bar with an improved information architecture
• Improved donor portal
• Educational materials for parents and children

Work Process

• Trello was used to organize our weekly work sprints and account for all tasks and numerically assigned effort value of each task.
• We kept Jackie Hoang involved in the process by providing updates on current phases of the design process on a daily, or bi-daily checkins.

Surveys

I put together two surveys, one for donors, which are people who would contribute to a non-profit or have worked with non-profits in the past, and one for people who had children in school. I targeted a few low income families from my very own network of friends and asked them questions about their own previous experiences working with charities, trying to find low income healthcare, why people donate, and what kinds of services were needed.

User Research

Next was to follow up with the participants in person or over the phone. I interviewed people from both the family side and donor side, I even interviewed my dentist who has partnered with a number of charities including…MtI, Music Cares, and The American Kidney Foundation. The questions I focused on were mainly; the ease of use with the existing site, what they liked and disliked about the site, what they expected from a non-profit site, why would they donate to Smile Partners, what would they change if they could.

What Did I Learn?

Personas

Our primary persona was John Weeks a retired dentist. Our secondary persona was Tyler Freer a young father.

Competitive/Comparative Analysis

I did a competitive/comparative analysis on 8 other nonprofit sites, including Smile partners. I ended up removing 3 of the sites because of their lack of mobile dental services. 

I felt it was important to focus on forms, resources, and News&events. Smile partners had all of these but the forms are located in a senior section buried in a bunch of content, making it nearly impossible to find. The Resources section is great but its located under something called Navigator Services which is not intuitive for users. Their news and events section is nothing more than a blog that hasn’t been updated since 2016. I observed the layouts of the other sites such as NavBars, any call to actions, and how the  content was organized. I took screenshots of each home page and laid them out. We each drew comments on what we liked and disliked about them and white boarded out some sketches.

Scenarios & Storyboards

Usability Testing

I tested the two scenarios on three groups of five people.

• The first group I tested soley on the existing site. During these tests I observed how they interacted with the site while timing how long it took them to complete each task. I then created a table and averaged out how long it took each task, then created a baseline of improvement by 50%
• The second group I had test only on our first prototype. During these tests I observed how they interacted with the prototype while timing how long it took them to complete each task. I made them speak out loud and also provide feedback as they navigated the prototype. I created a table and averaged out how long each task took and compared it to group 1.
• The third group I had test the existing site as well as our iterated prototype. During these tests I observed how they interacted with the iterated prototype while timing how long it took them to complete each task. I made them speak out loud and also provide feedback as they navigated the prototype. I created a table and averaged out how long each task took and compared it to group 1 and 2.

Group 1

• Navigation was difficult .
• Forms were hard to find.
• Becoming a Sponsor was unclear.
• There is inconstancy throughout the site.

Test Results

Group 1’s Test Results:Task 1 averaged at 55sec, Task 2 averaged at 1.25min. I wanted to increase usability on the site and compare our prototype to the existing site.

Group 2

• To Many NavBar Options.
• About & Contacts needed to be combined.
• What is Kids Corner?.
• Give button in NavBar is hard to see.

Test Results

Group 2's Test Results: Test times on our first prototype showed a 51% improvement on task 1 and a 54% improvement on task 2.

Group 3

• Give button still hard to see in NavBar
• Progress Bar in donate forms should show full task
• Use the word Donate instead of Give

Test Results

Group 3's Test Results: Test times on the Original site showed a 13% improvement on task 1. Task 2 had a 15% decrease in usability. Test times on our iterated prototype showed a 80% improvement on task 1 and a 51% improvement on task 2.

SquareSpace Migration & Final Site

Next Steps

• Create Senior Center “Join Us” page
• Create Employee page
• Fill in Calendar
• Kids Games
• Monthly sponsorship (sustaining membership)
• Deploy site on Squarespace

Self Critique

I learned a lot of valuable lessons during the research. One was conveying my process to our client so she could understand why we went through all this trouble instead of just plopping out a site. I also learned from reviewing our project slide deck, there were things I did that were not legal in the real world, peoples names, what they said and pictures.