Paddle For Life

UX/UI, WEBSITE DESIGN

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Dragon Boat Racing event for charity! Fun! Paddles Up!

PROJECT BRIEF

I am the lead designer for the website redesign for a small non-profit based out of Vancouver, WA. I have been tasked with the creation, design direction and maintenance involved in ensuring the Wordpress site is up to date and working as expected.

We started a redesign after I illustrated a need for a more powerful and interesting experience for visitors. The previous site did not explain the intricasies of the event and I was able to highlight the importance of providing the visitor an abundance of information so their questions could be answered. This redesign is scheduled to occur during the off season (autumn and winter), and had to be quickly moved from one host to another due to the previous host causing trouble with providing a good experience for those visiting as well as during development of the site. At first, the priority was the home page and then the rest of the pages. This evolved into creation of forms and enticing hero images that pulled the visitor in.

FUN FACTS

This referral came to me from friends from my Dragon Boat Racing team. They have been a wonderful client to work for and I love working on their website.

THE FINE DETAILS

TIMELINE: Project began in 2018

ROLE: UX/UI designer, Web designer

SCOPE: UX/UI Design, Website creation, Page layout

TOOLS: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Wordpress

ASSETS: Wordpress Pages & Design, PNGs

paddleforlife.org

CUSTOMER FOCUSED DESIGN

Paddle For Life is a very focused non-profit. In creating this site, we continued to keep their visitors and sponsors in mind as we worked on the site. Ensuring the site worked as beautifully on mobile devices as it did on a desktop computer was a high priority. This occasionally meant additional research and looking specifically at user journeys as they interact with the site, but ultimately this has been our focus as we continue to build out the site.

USERS & AUDIENCE

The target users and customers of Paddle For Life are primarily dragon boat race event participants, company sponsors employees, and other non-profit organizations and employees. These users specifically are looking for a seamless experience and an easy to navigate site. They want to be able to view the information they need quickly and easily.

One key difference between this group of users/visitors is they primarily view the site on desktop and secondarily via mobile. Applying user feedback has made charitable giving through the website a pleasant experience either on desktop or on mobile due to preference.

TEAM & ROLE

With my previous experience of creating seamless online experiences using Wordpress, as the lead UX/UI designer I led the team in making changes requested from users, customers, and the board of directors.

I coordinated and led the design of the site including: prototyping, product design, visual design, interaction, plugin support and recommendation, User journey and research, and some architecture.

DESIGN PROCESS

In order to identify the problems with the website and the next steps to take, we started out by making the site aligned with user and customer needs. We wanted to make the site function better and provide customers a better experience. After going through feature requests and changes, we were able to pinpoint areas of opportunity; visitors wanted an easier way to make donations along with a better way of organizing team and individual sign ups. Although we knew to truly grow the site to something more would require more resources, we focused entirely on the user experience in donations and giving, and proceed to design the site around that experience.

As we continued to visually explore options to enhancing the overall experience for the user, at one point during the design we decided to perfect form signups and donation gathering. We had received user feedback and iteration that showed that our specific user group who frequented the site preferred to have the option to input their own donation level instead of restrictive donation levels/tiers.

UX/UI DESIGN

The objective of the website and the interface was to keep the user/customers informed and allow for an easy way to book photography and videography appointments. We accomplished this by keeping the overall design very visual with large photography, strategic use and placement of text, vibrant color use, and an overall corporate look that encourages interaction. On the backend, we were able to connect registration forms page to Google Forms to record registration and ensure payments were made.

Beginning with low fidelity wireframes/prototypes, the skeleton of the site formed easily after being accepted by the board. Inspiration for the site came from the mission of Paddle For Life; to provide charitable giving to those in need by way of a fun Dragon Boat Event. The background is a simple white with an occasional light grey background to differentiate sections. A deep orange or blue background is used as well to emphasize quotes and important text. Keeping the overall design simple allows for the mission to speak for itself.

OUTCOME & RESULTS

Since launching the website, it has been well received by both Paddle For Life's board of directors and the visitors to the site. It has increased charitable giving through a PayPal link which also means a positive income stream for the beneficiaries of the event. A fantastic result of this project has been the introduction of specific processes to requesting design changes and allowing for payments through the website which they didn't have before.

CREDITS