Moseley and Kings Heath Shed Redesign

Background

Moseley and Kings Heath Shed (The Shed) is a charity organisation that aims to improve the mental and physical well-being of elderly people by providing a space for members to socialise and engage in workshop activities.

Problem

Current Website

The Home page and the Activity Groups page prior to our redesign.

Solution

Redesign the website to showcase information about the charity and their workshops in a better way to increase user engagement and member signups.

How did I have an impact?

I was tasked with the redesign and development of the Activity Groups and Outreach pages. In collaboration with the other designer on the team, I conducted an analysis into similar organisations focusing on how this information can be displayed in a simple way for the target audience. I conducted several user interviews providing insight into the current problem which reinforced the importance of promoting The Shed’s services. I was also responsible for photography of new content for the Gallery and other pages which helped meet the client’s goal to enhance visual appeal and provide updated content to users.

Client Kick-off Meeting

We interviewed the chairperson to understand more about the charity, their services and their goals for the new website. We also discussed technical constraints and feasibility given that the current website was being hosted on WordPress.

Client Goals

User Interviews

To understand more about the importance of their services, I visited The Shed and conducted 7 in-person interviews with old and new members. They expressed their issues with the existing site and what changes they would like to see.

Interviewing brought up the following issues:

Key Points:

The interviews were important as they helped us identify key problem areas.
Visiting in person also helped me to understand the overall vibe of The Shed. I felt so welcomed by the members; the friendly atmosphere and kindness was something that I knew would be important to portray to potential members through the new website and I shared this insight with the team.

Competitor Analysis

Key Points:

The analysis helped to identify important elements the website was missing that could be incorporated into our redesign.

• Strong visuals and large text will make it easier for the target audience to engage with the content
• A consistent colour scheme will improve visual appeal
• Having a dedicated page for workshop information and news that is easy to navigate will increase awareness of The Shed’s services

User Persona

Defining our Findings

Problem

Discovering workshop activities, news and membership information is difficult due to website complexity and lack of structure.

Hypothesis

Providing information in an organised manner will mean users are more likely to find out about The Shed’s activities and become a member.

How might we…

Reduce website complexity and increase awareness of the Shed’s services?

Wireframes

With a better understanding of requirements, we created some low fidelity wireframes to gain an idea of the overall layout.

Website Iterations

Once the design was finalised with the client, we set about developing the new site in a staging environment. We regularly discussed changes with the client and made iterations to ensure our changes were aligned with their goals.

High Fidelity Screens

Following feedback from the client, we integrated these changes into the final design.

• Added information about workshop activities on the Home page
• Clear images that can be enlarged and reduced text
• ‘Become a member’ CTA button on Home page navigating users to the membership form section
• Detailed information on Activity Groups page about workshops and how to book
• Clear navigation menu taking users to the dedicated News and Outreach sections
• Included an FAQs page to answer common questions

Overall Impact

[metrics coming soon]

Feedback

The following feedback was provided by the Project Manager and the chairperson of The Shed.

Final thoughts

This project taught me the value of building meaningful connections with users to provide a final product that will truly benefit them. There were many ideas that I wanted to incorporate when we first began the design process, for example:

HOWEVER

When conducting user interviews I discovered:

• Users didn’t have advanced technical skills and online processes would add additional complexity to the website
• Users preferred the old fashioned way of printing out the form to fill in as this meant they could bring it into The Shed to ask for help
• They preferred the simple process of emailing to enquire about workshops or popping into The Shed to ask staff
• It would be difficult for The Shed team to continuously update a calendar with changing workshop timings

Hence, the existing manual yet simple processes were kept. This really highlighted the importance of staying aligned with business goals and meeting user needs as even though I thought there was a better way to do things, it wouldn’t be fit for the intended target audience and we wouldn’t be solving the problem at hand.