MINDS

Improving website accessibility to increase contributions for a cause

Client Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS)

Sector Welfare Organisation

My Role UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer

Tools Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Optimal Workshop

Duration 2 weeks

Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS) is a voluntary welfare organisation that provides services for the intellectually disabled. In a bid to discover areas that we can improve and optimise for the MINDS website, my team and I spoke with people from all walks of life – from your ambivalent next-door neighbour to passionate social workers – to find out about their charity-related behaviours and how it would affect a user accessing a welfare organization website like MINDS.

We believe that improved accessibility of the MINDS website would lead to more contributions to the MINDS cause. With that in mind, our goal was to create a better and more seamless website experience for users.

1 - Empathize

Benchmarking

What were some good examples of similar welfare organisations both locally and around the world? We went through a list of websites that caught our team’s eye in terms of user experience and filtered them down to four selections as shown above.

Performing a task analysis based on three major paths users might take – to volunteer, to donate and to look for a service, we mapped out the pros and cons of important features and summarised them into a table of features that we would later on reference in our UX process. We also went ahead to brainstorm what modifications we could make and include in our improved version of the MINDS website.

2 - Define

What do we look for in welfare organisations?

We conducted one on one interviews with up to 12 users and asked questions ranging from their needs and concerns when selecting welfare organisations to work with, to their views on the intellectual disabled.

Here are some of the insights that we gleaned from our user interviews:

Trustworthiness
" I need credibility, authenticity and clarity. ”
Users want organisations to be transparent and upfront. To identify with the organisation’s values, they need clear information on the organisation and their services.
Initiative
“ I want to know what's being done and see results. ”
Users want to know the organisation's strategy, improvements and where their donations go.
Compassion
“ I empathise with the intellectually disabled and want them to be acknowledged. ”
Users want to do and contribute more to the less fortunate.

While the profile of the users we interviewed were varied across a wide spectrum of involvement in charity, we were surprised to find out that there were many similar behaviours in general. Users wanted to do good, but at the same time make sure they are contributing to a trustable welfare organization that can be held accountable for their actions. We also discovered that the majority of our users would access websites of welfare organisations via their mobile device through links on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Based on this, we have decided to adopt a mobile-first strategy for our prototype.

Developing user personas

We decided to dive deeper into creating a user experience that could fulfil our users’ needs and fix their pain points at the same time. To achieve that, we began by crafting two user personas based on the user interview insights.

The problem statement

From the two user personas we created, it became clear to us what the main issues our users were facing were.

” Our users need to find an organisation that aligns with their culture and values because they want their contributions to matter and be meaningful. “

Improving the site navigation

We understood from our users that the existing site navigation was confusing. Using Optimal Workshop, we conducted a hybrid card sort with 12 participants to sort 50 original navigation components into categories. Participants were asked to categorise the various navigation options on services and information found on MINDS. They were also invited to create their own categories or use the pre-defined categories set by our team.

From the results, we standardised the categories created into 8 median categories, all of which had more than 50% agreement among all our test participants.

3 - Ideate

Putting ourselves in the shoes of our users

We understood that we had two rather distinct user personas in terms of profile and personality. Things were starting to get interesting because while we understood that while both users would journey down their unique user experience pathways, their end goal was synonymous – to contribute to the MINDS cause.

We came up with a greyscale wire flow based on the above user flow and this would serve as the blueprint for our initial high-fidelity prototype.

4 - Prototype

The high-fidelity prototype

We understand that MINDS currently does not have a mobile-friendly screen.

From our user research, we have found out that most of our users actually access welfare organisation websites through social media or search engines using their mobile phones. As mentioned earlier, our team implemented the mobile-first design strategy, after which we will adapt the layout so that it can be viewed neatly on desktop devices without too many modifications.

We stood by the brand colour of MINDS – we’ve affectionately named it MINDS blue, and we’ve introduced the orange colour for call-to-action buttons. We have also included a sticky navigation bar for the important Call-to-action buttons, namely for contact, volunteer and donate – so that users can access these content no matter which page they are on. We have also carefully selected a dyslexia-friendly font, Century Gothic as the only font that will be used through the website.

View Prototype

5 - Test

Conducting usability tests

5 users were recruited to test the usability of the hi-fi prototype based on the following scenarios.

SCENARIO 1

You plan to volunteer at MINDS and would like to find out who MINDS cater their services to and the different volunteer opportunities available. Finally, you will have to fill up a volunteer sign-up submission form.

Task 1 – I want to look for volunteer opportunities
Task 2 – I want to sign up as a volunteer

SCENARIO 2

You plan to raise more awareness on the issues of the Intellectually Disabled and would like to plan an upcoming fundraiser for MINDs. Before you submit your plan, you want to learn more about the organisation and their values.

Task 1 – I want to learn about the organisation
Task 2 – I want to start a fundraising project

Analyses and recommendations

While all our users were able to complete the tasks of looking for volunteering opportunities, filling up the volunteer sign up form and learning more about the organisation with little hiccups, we had an issue when the task came down to starting a fundraiser. We realised that more often than not, the copywriting involved was leading our users astray and confusing them. We put on our thinking hat and started thinking of tweaks (or possibly overhauls) that we could implement in our iterated version.

1. Filling up the Volunteer sign up form
“ What could I fill up for ‘Area of Interest’ in the sign up form? “

We realised that without defined choices, users weren’t quite sure on how to proceed. What choices were there? Were users supposed to research on what activities they could indicate by pouring through the website again? To resolve that, we decided to establish pre-defined options for users to choose from so as to reduce their cognitive load.

Before

After

2. Start a fundraiser
“ I would want to speak with a real person. “

Several users were confused because they did not associate “fundraising” with “donate”. With no clear label for “fundraise”, they figured out that they would attempt to contact the organisation instead. We believe that a simple change with copywriting would resolve this problem.

Before

After

The solution at present

” We believe that by providing clear navigation routes through high call to action visibility and an improved content structure, our users will be able to confidently align their values with the organisation for them to make meaningful donations and engage in purposeful volunteer activities. “

Next steps

1. ‘Chat’ option to help users realtime
Consider expanding on help service with a ‘chat’ option to better customer service. Users might require realtime help while navigating the website or have pressing enquiries.

2. Explore a UX writing plan
For users who might not be familiar with the welfare organisation framework, specialised terms and phrases might sound foreign. We suggest diving deeper into a detailed UX writing plan for enhanced understandability and user-oriented content copy.

3. Streamling navigation categories
We felt that the navigation options could be further streamlined to allow users to move through the website more intuitively. This could be explored by recruiting more users to participate in the card sorting tests.