Reconceptualisation
Designing and launching the new ANTaR Qld website
Work type: Internship
Project start: Ago 2015
Timeline: 6 months
Services: UI, UX, User Research, User Testing, User Flows, Data Analytics, Front End Development
Design tools: Corel Draw, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Coggle, Azure, Trello
Client: ANTaR Qld
The challenge
Overview
Goals
The general objective was to attract more visitors to the site, disseminating the principles and values of the NGO and consequently attracting new investors as a specific objective.
Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) is an independent, national non-government, not-for-profit, community-based organisation founded in 1997 which advocates for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia and aims to help overcome disadvantage. Its staff, board and membership comprise mainly non-Indigenous people who support Indigenous voices and interests.
The work lasted for 6 months and the proposed challenge was to redesign a website known as www.antarqld.org.au.
User Research
Firstly, I needed to know about the history of the country because this was the main reason the NGO existed. So I read articles, visited museums, and spoke with the natives. Then I understood how the NGO started, what its mission was, its values, what it stood for and what it did in order to understand the exact role that I was about to fill.
After gaining knowledge about the culture, the next step was to understand the current state of the NGO, so my next area of research was internal. I wanted to know who the target audience was, how communication with them was handled, what media was used, who the competitors were, which other NGOs defended the same cause directly or indirectly, and the terms used by them that brought a more intimate approach to the target demographic.
After this internal research, I moved on to field research, where I went to events and I met and talked with people interested in the cause. The people contributed both financially and by volunteering. I noted down their talking points and analyzed how the NGO was seen in the eyes of its contributors, what they thought about it and, what they thought could be improved.
I visited the Madame Tussauds Museum located in Sydney.
This is a tribute to Eddie Mabo, an Indigenous Australian man from the Torres Strait Islands known for his role in campaigning for Indigenous land rights in Australia.
I visited the Melbourne museum and there there were several sessions, historical objects and a lot of shared knowledge aimed at the discernment of the country's historical culture.
I went to events related to actions that concern the Australian Aboriginals and talked with the natives.
Mapping the current state
The NGO's current website was polluted (image right below), which made navigation confusing and uninteresting to the user. The website was not responsive, the Google Analytics code was not implemented and the donation button was hidden (the user needed to give 3 clicks to reach the donation button).
The next step was to put the needs of the target audience on paper. After meetings and comparing information about the current state of the site, the user's needs for a simpler and more straightforward layout, and the desired outcome of the NGO, I drew and vectorized a wireframe using Corel Draw, and then created a mindmap with the processes of the site using Coggle.
This is a screenshot I took from the old website. No donation button, no social media icons, horizontal and vertical menus, confusing and not responsive.
It had a high bounce rate according to Google Analytics.
Testing layouts
After analyzing the data collected from the research, we reached a consensus of two interfaces. One of them with the highlight in blue for the donation button at the bottom with shades of brown. The colour represents strength and solidity, being the colour of the earth and it is also associated with sadness, which translates very well into the history of the land of Down Under.
The second MVP was designed with a palette of colours widely used in Aboriginal paintings and with greater visibility for the donation button.
Both MVPs were tested with 5 committee members, their reactions were analyzed, their patterns of user behaviour were correlated along with their criticisms and suggestions.
The second layout was the most liked by 80% of users, on top of that, some changes were made after some similarities were detected, for example, greater emphasis on the menu letters and change to the footer with the insertion of relevant topics.
The outcome
I did not have the chance to use many of the processes involved in site planning, firstly because the team was shortened and secondly because of the deadline for my student visa.
After the implementation of the new responsive layout, we were able to measure the statistics through Google Analytics.
The number of visitors tripled, and the time spent on the website by the visitors increased considerably from 3 seconds and a half to approximately 10. The number of donations, however, did not triple, but there was a significant increase of which I was not given details.
On Alexa and Similarweb sites that show preview data, for example, it was possible to measure that the peak views were in the month when the new layout was released, which was in January 2016. At present, the layout has changed, but my name still can be seen at the bottom of the current website (last seen July/2022).
In the end, I created a video using Adobe Premiere for submitting the site to committee members before posting it online.
In the video above, you can watch my whole experience written here in a video format. It is in Portuguese but it is exactly the same content I described on this page.
Click to see full preview image
After
Before
