MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK

A REDESIGN FOR THE AGES

The League of Women Voters of Austin was in need of a complete overhaul of their entire online experience.  Their previous site was managed by volunteer support and had fallen victim to 'design reinterpretation' and was not representing the Austin chapter nor the LWV in the best light that they deserved.

I worked pro-bono to reengineer and redesign the entire website experience from the ground up with a team under the guidance and leadership of the *Leap to Success program.

* Leap to Success is a fantastic organization that pairs talent with local organizations needing assistance.  I recommend anyone in the Austin, Texas area looking to promote their skills, build their portfolio, and/or network with other professionals, look into this wonderfully lead and run organization.

ROLE

UX, Ix, Visual Design

YEAR

2013

DURATION

3 months

GETTING INTO THE PROBLEM SPACE

It was clear from the initial interviews with the staff at LWV that they had wanted help for quite some time.  They knew the site was lacking in performance, especially around the donation and membership sign-up functionality.  The donation feature had many issues, namely the fact that they were incurring the PayPal charges without a way for the user to choose whether or not they would like to pay this.  Their membership sign-up process was a near complete manual one and was costing them valuable time and effort.

Their key deliverable was the yearly Voters Guide.  This took most of their resources to build and is a valuable resource for the greater Austin area come election time.

There were three very important things in this redesign:

  1. Make donating easy and allow the user to choose PayPal charges included or not.

  2.  Make the membership sign-up and renewals processes automatic to capture and store user data on the website database.

  3.  Improve the overall design: Navigation and information structures, visual treatment and iconography, ensure access to information is clear and easy, especially the Voters Guides and engage and delight the target audience.

Could we pull it off?

YES WE CAN!

I was able to vastly improve their web presence with a solidly designed web page complete with gravity forms that took care of replacing their manual processes, allowing users to donate and sign-up easier, and providing additional functionality (calendar of events, documents, blogging engine, contact form, ease in making updates, etc.).  We over-delivered with a huge redesign for the good people at LWV Austin and many were saying that this web site was not only the best LWV site in the country but was just as nice as the national site!  A most fulfilling design adventure indeed.