Baptist World Aid (BWA) is an international aid organisation that collects funds through charitable campaigns (such as child sponsorship) before distributing these to projects initiated by the organisation on the ground. Their website had formed an integral part in revenue generation but was in need of an overhaul for growth to continue. I was the lead UI designer in the most significant website redevelopment undertaken by BWA. The goals were to: redefine the organisation as a major player in the market, increase donations whilst reducing drop-offs with improved user experience and provide a platform for engagement and advocacy. Redeveloped and new functionality included: comprehensive membership area, groups, online donations, child sponsorship, gift shop, advocacy platform including petitioning and more.
I designed countless components and pages for various staged releases of the BWA site.
Process
Delivery of the redevelopment was scheduled into a number of separate stages with the stakeholder feedback and design iterations incorporated during each stage.
I played a leadership role in developing the user experience and information architecture which was guided by findings from stakeholder focus groups, competitor analysis and analytics audit.
My main role however, was the development of a comprehensive user interface (UI). We began with low fidelity wireframing before I developed a high-fidelity prototype wireframe for stakeholder testing.
Moving on from wireframing I develop a number of UI concepts that incorporated a new brand identity developed by a 3rd party. Doing so required adhering to a fresh set of brand guidelines. Once a concept had been selected I designed a high-fidelity user interface. I worked closely alongside the developers to release the interface in a number of live development stages allowing feedback, testing and iterating throughout.
I also played a key role in front-end development particularly ensuring style cohesion.
I documented UX designs for stakeholder feedback.
I developed a functioning prototype wireframe for user and stakeholder testing that informed my high-fidelity UI design.
The sites "store" was a personalised eCard system combined with donations. The physical gift formed part of BWA's charitable work with third world communities in need. With 3 seperate outcomes designing the UX & UI for the store was a fun challenge!
Some of the high-fidelity store process wireframes.
A major part of BWA's advocacy program was their monthly print publication. There are good and bad ways to publish the same content online...
UX/UI challenge in detail
As part of a third major feature release to the redeveloped site BWA wanted incorporate a digital copy of their print magazine. This represented a number of UX/UI challenges, not least that BWA wished to retain the issue format meaning users would potentially be presented with an influx of new articles.
I argued against the integration of a PDF flip-book platform suggested as the main solution. As an alternative I championed a user-centred, object orientated solution where articles were generated automatically from the same assets graphic designers used to create the print version. The result would be more efficient and user friendly.
The solution I designed enabled articles to be stand-alone in their own right - allowing the incorporation of tags and keyword searching - whilst remaining connected to and ultimately initially published as part of an issue.