Gathering Ground

TIMELINE

January - May 2022

TEAM

Solo project

MY ROLE

UX Researcher

UX Designer

UI Designer

METHODS

Heuristic Analysis, User Interviews, User Personas, Contextual Inquiry and Task Analysis, Content Audit, System Usability Scale Survey, Competitive and Comparative Analysis, Card Sorting, Task Flows, Site Mapping, Wireframing, Prototyping, Copywriting, CSS

TOOLS

Figma, Optimal Workshop, Maze, Zoom, Google Workspace, WordPress

Project Overview

The Challenge

Gathering Ground is a nonprofit land-based organization dedicated to exploring the question, "How on Earth should we live?" The nonprofit is situated on 40 acres of farmland on rural Washington Island, Wisconsin, and includes a vineyard, an orchard and a vegetable garden. Through educational programming and community initiatives, Gathering Ground seeks to cultivate a sustainable and symbiotic partnership between humans and the land we inhabit.

The founders of Gathering Ground reached out to me for help updating their website, which hadn’t been changed since the organization was founded in 2015. In the years since, the nonprofit has expanded its scope and gained greater clarity on its mission, but this new direction wasn't being conveyed on the site.

The board members wanted to:

make it easier for supporters to donate online
draw more attention to their events and workshops
entice website users to visit their frequently updated Instagram feed
integrate the DonorBox platform seamlessly into the website.

My initial research revealed that visitors to the website were:

struggling to understand Gathering Ground's mission and purpose
unsure how donations are used
having difficulty navigating the site and finding the information they needed
overwhelmed by lots of dense text
confused by poor color contrast and dark images with inaccessible text overlays.

The Research Process

I began the project by conducting research into user needs and behaviors.

I interviewed internship participants and current donors to get a better sense of how they became involved with Gathering Ground.

I observed users who were unfamiliar with the organization as they visited the site for the first time, in order to gauge the initial impressions the website was making.

I then conducted timed task analyses with these users in order to understand how they were navigating through the site. I followed each task analysis with a System Usability Scale (SUS) Survey.

I researched nonprofit website best practices and performed competitive and comparative analyses of other websites in the nonprofit and sustainability sectors.

I performed a content audit of the existing site, which surfaced a wealth of information in the blog archives that I was then able to transform into evergreen content.

Once I confirmed that wayfinding and navigation were unclear, I asked users to do an open card sort, in order to determine the most intuitive way to restructure the site's information architecture.

The Design Process

The existing website was on the for-profit WordPress.com, which offers limited options for customization and isn't cost-effective for nonprofits in the long run. Before embarking on the design process, I migrated the website to the open-source WordPress.org and connected it to DreamHost, a green web hosting service that offers a nonprofit discount.

After an initial phase of ideation and iteration in Figma, I set up a staging environment and began implementing the changes within it. This kept the existing website live and intact. I used a robust and flexible theme that allowed me to prioritize UX best practices, and added custom CSS when necessary. I ran usability tests throughout the development process, using the feedback to inform my design direction.

After pushing the changes to the live website, I held training sessions with the board member responsible for maintaining the website, to make sure she felt comfortable navigating the backend, authoring blog posts, and updating content as needed.

The Outcome

The redesigned site positions Gathering Ground as a professional, trustworthy and purpose driven nonprofit, allowing its founders to fundraise and attract much needed support.

The site is easier to navigate, with a more intuitive site structure and a primary menu that establishes a clear information hierarchy.

The organization's mission and objectives are clearly stated on the homepage, reducing users' cognitive overload and establishing a baseline of trust.

User trust is reinforced throughout the site, with clear information about how donations are used, easy access to annual reports, and prominently displayed info about sponsors and partners.

Clear calls to action encourage users to get involved – via donating, volunteering, attending events and workshops, or signing up for the internship program.

The DonorBox software is now integrated into the website via modals, so users don't have to leave the site in order to donate.

The overall look and feel of the website is lighter, brighter and more easily scannable, and all images and text have been reformatted to adhere to WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards.