Dorothy’s Place, a feeling of community for senior LGBTQ+ online (September - December 2021)
Project snapshot
This was for Centennial College's Interactive Media Management program where students are matched with a client to work on a project. The client, Dorothy's Place, is a program for senior LGBTQ2S+ in Scarborough.
The problem: The client wanted to be more visible online to attract participants and donations to the program. Their existing channels were their Facebook page, a webpage managed by their church, and newsletter.
My role: Point of contact with client, product designer (user research, current state analysis, UX strategy, information architecture, wireframes for donations page, prototype for donations page)
Tools used: Google Forms (surveys), Miro (brainstorming), Figma (wireframes), InVision (prototype), Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (graphics)
Process: Discovery
I initiated a meeting with our client to understand what they needed and why they needed it. From there, our team came up with a scope of work document outlining our deliverables and timeline.
We created 2 personas based on surveys we sent to members and stakeholders, additional information provided by Dorothy's Place, and research into the community itself.
Member persona
Stakeholder (donor) persona
Member persona
Our team also conducted a current state analysis and content audit where we reported our findings and recommendations for the next steps, which was to create an official website and content strategy for them.
Current state analysis of the Facebook page of Dorothy's Place
Current state analysis of the Dorothy's Place Facebook Info page
Content audit of the Facebook page of Dorothy's Place
Current state analysis of the Facebook page of Dorothy's Place
Process: Design
After we agreed with the client on the next steps, our team put together the information architecture for MVP and de-prioritized some items in the roadmap to Phase 2 when the client had the resources to implement them.
From the user insights about what attracted participants to the program and their fears about social isolation, I proposed a theme of "an opportunity for connection" for the site so the overall experience would promote that feeling of community the participants were looking for and that the donors wanted to support.
Aligned under a common theme, our team split up the work to create the wireframes. Since we had a graphic designer with professional UX/UI experience on the team, I proposed that she take the lead on the Home page, with me supporting her for copywriting. I took the lead on the Donations page, while other team members handled Events and Support pages.
Brainstorming the interactive element on the Home page
Ideal state: An embedded donations form that guides the user and breaks the process down into manageable steps.
Second attempt: embed the existing donations form
Brainstorming the interactive element on the Home page
I created 3 iterations for the wireframes, improving the user experience with each one. The final wireframe was turned into the prototype which we presented to our client at the end of the project. It was very gratifying to hear from them that we had been able to capture the spirit of the program and the community with the prototype we had built. After the project was over, the client even offered to pay our team to implement it as a separate project outside of school.
Key takeaways
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Understanding the pain points of your user can make for a very powerful experience. When we brought up the theme of connection versus social isolation, our client was ecstatic that we had gotten to the heart of what the community was about.
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Anchoring the user experience and design around a central theme gives a sense of cohesion when there's 5 different product designers working on the team.
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Keeping the end user involved at every milestone in the project gives you access to the most important perspective.