The Audre Lorde Project Website Redesign Concept
The Team: Sebastian Sandoval, Elazar Weiner, Olivia Meyers, Cynthia Santiago
My Role: Research and Design
Tools: Sketch, Figma, Miro
View the prototype HERE
A team of four including myself were tasked to create a redesign of the Audre Lorde Project’s current website. Before we jumped into designing, we wanted to know how people get involved with a social reform cause chooses to support an organization. Below is the current homepage.
The team and I interviewed a handful of individuals who actively support social reform nonprofit organizations. We wanted to know what was important to them in a website for an organization that they were considering supporting.
We found our interviewees by sending out a screener survey to people who were believed to best fit the criteria. The criteria that were best fit for the Audre Lorde website were people who supported social reform issues, particularly relating to people of color and the LGBTQ community.
The images below are snapshots from our screener results.
The data accumulated from those interviews were laid out into an affinity map, “I” statements, and insights. We learned that people judge an organization’s credibility by how clearly the website is formatted, if pictures are provided, and if the organization can provide to potential supporters current statistics about the cause.The data accumulated from those interviews were laid out into an affinity map, “I” statements, and insights.
We learned that people judge an organization’s credibility by how clearly the website is formatted, if pictures are provided, and if the organization can provide to potential supporters current statistics about the cause.
The insights gleaned from our research helped us come up with our persona, Camilla Stevens along with our problem statement. Camila wanted to ensure her energies would be adequately used for the cause that the organization claims to support.
How might we improve a website’s structure that would establish credibility for the organization?
A journey map showed a visual depiction of Camilla’s emotional journey that she experienced in light of being introduced to Audre Lorde’s current site. Camilla is excited to hear about the organization’s work and when she looks at the site to find out more information for clarity she gets confused. However, because she decided to follow the organization on social media, she was later able to see a personal story- inspiring her to take the leap and join the organization.
Next, we observed a group of people navigate the Audre Lorde Project’s current website. We wanted to determine how well these people were able to navigate it. We found that people were able to successfully complete the tasks provided, but without much ease. The website was overly wordy, did not give many contexts for the work they were doing, and the site looked outdated. All in all, it diminished the organization’s credibility in the users’ eyes.
The team then conducted two design studio rounds to redesign both the about page and a program page. The low fidelity sketches produced included statistics, carousels with pictures and videos, and a clear visual hierarchy.
Then we created a mid-fidelity prototype that was tested for functionality. The users responded well to the minimalistic design and had no problem completing the tasks provided to them.
Unlike Audre Lorde’s current muted color scheme, this prototype utilized a bold color palette and a minimalistic, yet refined design. We drew inspiration from the current trends that we found were used in top-rated non-profit websites as guidance for our color choices and typography choices. Our target was to build a site that was eye-catching, inspirational, and heartwarming.
We ran a round of usability tests to see how people responded to this new design. People were in favor of this new design and they all completed the tasks. Two out of three users commented that they would like for the homepage to include a short bio about who Audre Lorde was.
The next steps for this project will include building out the other pages for the site and include a bio about Audre Lorde on the homepage. We will then test the updated prototype. After that, we will test a prototype for the site’s mobile version.
