The Arc of Dallas / Ft. Worth

Team won 3rd place out of 27 international teams.

As part of the Knowbility Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR), my team volunteered to completely re-designed client’s website.

Role

Project Manager

Product Manager

Design Lead

Year

2020

Deliverables

  • Project Monitoring, Controlling & Integration

  • Business, Product & Design Requirements

  • Stakeholder Management

  • UX Research
  • Information Architecture
  • Content Strategy
  • Wireframes

  • Custom WordPress CMS: Achieved WCAG 2.1 Level AA & Section 508 compliance

Final HI Fi arc desktop site

Business Objective

The Arc is a national organization dedicated to promoting and protecting the human rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Regional chapters acts in local ways to sustain the charter and facilitate supporting programs which provide training and advocacy resources for families and individuals.

Leadership wants to improve the web site. The is desire to provide authoritative and accessible knowledge and services for the target audience

Frustrations

  • Content is difficult to discover and not organized.
  • Design lacks consistency and appeal.
  • Technology platform is difficult to maintain and update.
  • Technology platform impedes successful interaction by key user groups, lacks a mobile experience.

01

Purpose

I interviewed the client to gain a understanding of the vision, mission and purpose for the website.We discussed the organizations formation and history.

I understood their immediate and future goals for the website and how it could advance the organization.

We agreed on a strategy that would make the best use of the limited time line we currently had that would set them up for success once the team stepped away.

We reviewed the condition of the site and organizations content.

The clients main goal is to make training and family support service prominently available to visitors online..

02

Users

Different visitors have different needs and expectations.

Our users will face sever challenges to interacting with a website due to cognitive impairments.

Notable challenges:

  • Short attention span and a limited capacity to retain information.
  • Significant physical impairments that create obstacles to interoperability with computers and computer interfaces.

03

Content Audit

There is a deep backlog of content from numerous authors.

The content needs to be re-factored to provide a consistent brand voice. 

There are many channels being used to broadcast content and little consistency in the execution.

04

Technology

The legacy CMS is not mobile responsive.

Content display is inconsistent and makes reading difficult.

The administrators have low technology expertise and struggle to update content and to maintain the site.

Technology constraints hamper the ability to solicit donations and increase online membership conversion .

05

Design

The visual design of the site is poor and does not motivate site exploration.

Improved aesthetics can be leveraged to create visual hierarchy in harmony with the information and purpose of the site.

Discovery

Goals

Content Strategy

Align the content with the mission so visitors  can engage with the services and get involved with the mission.

Information architecture

Improve site information architecture to improve find-ability and discoverable..

Visual Design

Update the interface aesthetic to create a welcoming space and reinforce the perception of subject matter expertise and authority.

Technology

Deploy a technology platform the client can maintain and grow independently and that utilizes best practices.

Values

The target audience is comprised of individuals & families with Intellectual  and Developmental Disabilities  (IDD).

Solutions and techniques must be employed that address these target audiences. This means a focus on incorporating accessibility best practices into every aspect of the visitor experiences.

Improved user experience for visitors requiring special accommodations creates a better experience for all visitors.

Honor the mission of The Arc, to serve this audience in ways that show that someone understands what questions they are going to have when faced with the challenges associated with IDD.

The Arc is supported by dedicated people. That community is there to support those in need, provide answers and surface resources.

The ARC is someone to ask, “How do I get answers?”

Content Audit

The content inventory exists in many different digital formats. 

We used spreadsheets to document, catalog and organize.

We used word clouds, brain writing and association exercises to chunk and group.

Clustering

Arc Content Inventory

Mind mapping & Brainstorming

We looked for common themes in the content backlog.

We identified gaps where content is lacking.

Mind Map

Research: Findings

I analyzed national and regional non-profits that served disabled communities, evaluating how they handled visitor interactions, messaging and branding.

Increase Donations Conversion:
Funding is a important part of maintenance and growth. Reducing friction to collecting donations is a high priority.

Encouraging visitors to join the organization increases visibility and the available resources.

Community Engagement, Training and Advocacy are core mission goals for The Arc.
We will focus on deliberate design decisions that that increase engagement.

Information Architecture

I documented different navigation information architecture models.

The team reviewed the findings, weighing pros/cons of the sample..

We noted page naming conventions we might adopt.

Looking at subject domains.

Parsing the commonly occurring themes for correlation.

Bundling and reducing repetition to produce a durable IA.

Info Architecture Stickies

Card Sorting
(1st draft)

Information Architecture
(2nd draft)

Arc DFW Info Archit Diagram

CMS Selection

Requirements:

We selected WordPress because:

  • Ability to include accessibility in the front end with moderate development investment.
  • Scale-ability for functionality.
  • Scale-ability for content strategy growth.

1. Low cost implementation
2. Low cost maintenance
3. Easy to find contract support
4. Code implementation is manageable
5. Well supported

Design

The Jr. Designer created mockups.

We presented the designs to the customer and solicited feedback, iterating and maturing the designs.

Once the customer approved of the designs we generated high fidelity comps and received final approval.

Arc low fidelity mockup

Responsive, Mobile Design 1st

Arc Mobile View

Menu Annotation Example

“in situations when the parent menu item needs to carry out a function, such as linking to a web page, a separate button can be added to the parent item, to open and close the submenu. This button can also act as a visual indicator for the presence of a submenu.”

Editors: Eric EggertShadi Abou-Zahra Contributors: The Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG)

Final  Implementation

Final HI Fi arc desktop site

Takeaway

The redesigned The Arc of Dallas / Ft. Worth site was submitted for the 2019 Knowbility AIR Rally.

Out of 27 international teams that began the competition and 15 of which submitted a completed submission, our team took 3rd place overall.

I continued to volunteer technical and design support to the organization in my spare time.

I really value learning about the services this organization provides as well as the learning opportunities presented during this project.

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