The primary problems I found in my research were that users had trouble 1. navigating the different pages/sections and finding the exact information they are looking for and 2. taking any sort of action towards getting involved, whether that was signing up to volunteer, completing a donation payment, or signing up to be a sponsor. Users also felt that the website was boring and lacking hierarchy and visual interest. Without a lot of color, images, or interactivity, users weren't motivated to get involved or learn more about the organization.
With this in mind, I focused most of my attention on creating intuitive flows between information and pages and creating an engaging, interactive design. I pared all of the information down to 3 pages, one for all of the about, story, mission, and other information, one for information about getting involved, and one for donations.
For branding, I first decided on a clean, modern sans-serif font for the website, as well as a variety of vibrant colors and an illustration style (childlike doodles). Once I had the style guide set up, I noticed that the original logo no longer fit the style of the rest of the brand, so I created a new one, keeping in mind my goals of creating colorful, creative design. I came up with a logo of a small child created by combining very organic "V" and "H" shapes. As for the visual style of the website, I went with a clean and simple design of dark navy and white with bold all-caps headers and big, impactful hero images. Then, to create more of a child-like feel, I added a bunch of doodles on every section of the website. My intention was to make it seem like the children had doodled all over the page. As for animations, I tried to add as many as possible to keep the site engaging for the user. I had different sections pop up and move so they weren't so static.
One thing that surprised me about this process was how difficult it was to gauge the spacing and sizing of everything. In previous UX projects, I haven't had as many different sized and shaped elements to think about, so this was somewhat new to me. I learned a lot about type sizing, hierarchy, white space, and working on a grid. I still don't feel like my spacing is perfect, but I tried my best to keep it consistent using auto layout and empty rectangles as separators between sections.
The most important thing that I learned throughout this whole process was how to use design to tell a story. Using animations like the mountain appearing in front of the kid on his dad's shoulders and the puzzle pieces coming together, I was able to tell stories and evoke emotion, which is what human design is all about. I am still working on being intentional with things like that and not just putting together what looks good but what means something, but I definitely learned a lot about storytelling through this process and got inspiration from my classmates.
