After nearly a year on the project, Community Coalition has launched the new design for their website. I am happy that I had the opportunity to participate in this process. Despite the longer than expected timeline to complete the project, I gained valuable experience and learned a lot of things on my journey as the team’s UX and graphic designer.

Lessons learned

• People come from different backgrounds and have different experience to bring to the table. Take advantage of this diversity.
• When working with people, things can take longer than expected. But…
• Be patient and enjoy the ride.
• The organization knows their users best, or at least assume that they do, so trust what they tell you.
• Be empathetic, even if you don’t think you can completely relate to the user.
• Working together helps the overall understanding.

UX deliverables created

• Wireframes
• Personas
• Interviewing stakeholders
• Competitive analysis
• High fidelity mockups
• Process and user flows
• Content inventory, analysis and strategy
• Information architecture and taxonomy

Takeaways

• You get out of it what you put in. If you put in more, you can get very valuable assets.
• Be willing to learn from others. You learn more by keeping your ears open and mouth shut.
• Keep technology in mind. Not all users are on a high speed device with quick internet access.
• Do you best to get the organization to clean up items that are not being used on the site. Analytics is a great tool to validate this cause.
• Try to tell the organization’s story. The more you learn about them, the easier this is to do.
• Have fun and enjoy giving back to the community.