Tag Archives: community Coalition

Community Coalition’s website relaunch

Jennifer Blatz UX design community coalition website redesignAfter nearly a year on the project, Community Coalition has launched the new design for their website. I am happy that I had the opportunity to participate in this process. Despite the longer than expected timeline to complete the project, I gained valuable experience and learned a lot of things on my journey as the team’s UX and graphic designer.

Lessons learned
  • People come from different backgrounds and have different experience to bring to the table. Take advantage of this diversity.
  • When working with people, things can take longer than expected. But…
  • Be patient and enjoy the ride.
  • The organization knows their users best, or at least assume that they do, so trust what they tell you.
  • Be empathetic, even if you don’t think you can completely relate to the user.
  • Working together helps the overall understanding.
UX deliverables created
  • Wireframes
  • Personas
  • Interviewing stakeholders
  • Competitive analysis
  • High fidelity mockups
  • Process and user flows
  • Content inventory, analysis and strategy
  • Information architecture and taxonomy
Takeaways
  • You get out of it what you put in. If you put in more, you can get very valuable assets.
  • Be willing to learn from others. You learn more by keeping your ears open and mouth shut.
  • Keep technology in mind. Not all users are on a high speed device with quick internet access.
  • Do you best to get the organization to clean up items that are not being used on the site. Analytics is a great tool to validate this cause.
  • Try to tell the organization’s story. The more you learn about them, the easier this is to do.
  • Have fun and enjoy giving back to the community.

 

Keep up the competitive analysis for CoCo

For CoCo’s redesign, I examined a number of website that CoCo said was similar to theirs, as far as the organization, not necessarily the design. It’s very helpful to see what other organizations that are similar to yours are doing on their website. What CoCo particularly liked about Homeboy Industries‘ website was the prominent “Donate” button that was on every page and was sticky at the top of the screen as the user scrolled down through the content.

Homeboy Industries website for the CoCo Competitive Analysis. Jennifer Blatz UX Design
Though Homeboy Industries has a different focus, than CoCo, they can reach the same audience in some ways. Not to mention both organizations are based in Los Angeles.

 

What are other sites like CoCo doing?

Competitive Analysis of the website for Empower Los Angeles.. Jennifer Blatz Design UX
Competitive Analysis of the website for Empower Los Angeles.

It’s competitive analysis time! As part of any redesign, not only is it important to understand what your website is doing. It’s also helpful to see what other organizations that are similar to yours are doing on their website. For CoCo’s redesign, I examined a number of website that CoCo said was similar to theirs, as far as the organization, not necessarily the design. Here’s what Empower LA have going on at their website.

Creating More Personas for CoCo

I wanted to create more than one persona since there are a few groups that use the CoCo website. So a part of my Community Coalition of South LA Taproot project, or better knows as CoCo I am working on some deliverables to accompany the project. Based another one of the stakeholder interviews I performed this week, plus additional resources that were provided by the organization, I came up with this fitting Persona.

CoCo Persona Jennifer Blatz Design UX
A good way to keep the CoCo project on track is to create Personas to always keep the website’s users in mind.

Creating Personas for Coalition website

Persona for Community Coalition UX Jennifer Blatz Design
Persona for Community Coalition

As part of my Community Coalition of South LA Taproot project, or better knows as CoCo I am working on some deliverables to accompany the project. Based on one of the stakeholder interviews I performed this week, and other resources provided by the organization, I came up with this fabulous Shelia Persona.