ASRC is one of Australia’s leading Refugee and Asylum Seeker advocacy organisations. Based in Melbourne, they offer a wide range of services, from legal support to councelling. They also enable people from all walks of life, with a diverse range of skills, to contribute through Volunteering. Our Project focuses on the redesign of ASRC’s website based on the experience of people who would like to sign up to volunteer or donate. I was a quarter of our team. My largest contributions on this project were in user research, ideation, wireframing and prototypying.
Contributors who are keen to volunteer or donate to human rights organisations are often time poor or financially constrained. They are passionate about contributing but are unsure whether an organisation aligns with their values and can be trusted to allocate most donated funds to the people in need. Contributors want to be able to easily find key information on an organisation’s values, people and programs. They particularly look for evidence of past success in delivery of services and financial information.
Our team hypothesise that creating an inviting digital story for the ASRC will result in an improvement of volunteer uptake and increased donations because we know stories and connections create more supportive communities.
Our team relied on a data driven approach gathered from interviews, surveys and user tests on the current website. An affinity map was created to synthesize the pains identified.
Our team then grouped the most interesting and common insights from our research.
Based on our research, we discovered 3 user types and we focused on the user type most likely to engage with the ASRC Website and within their community.
Meet Ryan.
Further building upon our user persona, we created a value proposition canvas to define, understand and solve the pains for our user and define what the website already does well and find opportunities to further serve our user.
The user testing conducted on the existing website revealed that the current navigation tools and site map were bloated, confusing and not consistent. Our solution to this was to completetely overhaul the navigation and sitemap to help make the user flow much simpler and intuitive. Our main focus was to cut out the bloat and build smarter categories that would be easier for a user to know what to expect inside each category.
Below is the existing sitemap, the updated sitemap and our notes from the process of trimming, sorting and prioritising the new sitemap.
For our initial paper prototype, our team each got creative with a mobile first idea of what the new ASRC website may look like. We focused on the home, about us, donate and volunteer pages. After some discussion we agreed on our favourite ideas and what approach may be best ofr the user and then worked on a lo-fi protype together.
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Before finalising a high fidelity prototype, our team had a deep discussion on the current style on the website. We all agreed it was too clinical and lacked its own identity and didn’t reflect the message or the vibrant story behind the ASRC. We decided on a much more colourful approach to reflect the positive mission and community of the organisation and used colours commonly found within the diverse countries and cultures that the ASRC represents. Our iconagraphy built upon this approach. The people within the community of the ASRC are what make the ASRC a fantastic organisation and we wanted to show that this organisation is about people.
Below is an image of the ASRC website as it was and then images of our redesign.
User tests were conducted on the high fidelity prototype, here is the feedback on the redesign:
● Information about the ASRC seemed easy to find (who they are and what they do)
● Finding the donation and volunteer page was simple and straightforward
● The site was colourful and had a lively feeling, with a sense of positivity and community
