Context
Odyssey, Inc. is a non-profit organization located in Atlanta, GA that offers year-round educational services to K-12 Atlanta Public School students. I had the privilege of working with the program as their Robotics instructor for several years and later had the opportunity to explore areas of growth through user experience research. This research led to a prototype for my own pet project, Apply, and led to a collaborative effort to revamp Odyssey’s application process to make it faster and more accessible. Upon completion of the application process transformation, I was commissioned to further my work by redesigning and engineering the Odyssey website.
Problem
The Odyssey team was eager to make a responsive website that was easy to navigate for parents, students, and donors alike. It was a unique challenge because each leg was a vital persona for the Odyssey community to succeed, and the current website provided hurdles for each group to accomplish their task. Odyssey administration also needed to be able to access the site to make changes for events, announcements, and highlights. Lastly, the website was to serve as a foundation for further growth, as they sought to eventually expand their reach and capabilities. As this was a one-time contract, I was aware that I was going to have to build something that someone else could take over later down the line.
Process
Much of my research from the application process was still relevant here, but I had to do further research on the new personas in order to understand the primary goals of each. Students primarily came to the website to learn more about the offerings during the summer enrichment programs. Donors primarily came to the site to leave a charitable donation (or to learn about the next fundraising opportunity, depending on the season). Parents, as a group, varied the most in their primary goals. Some visited the site to learn more about the program, others only wanted to renew their application for the summer enrichment program, and others were eager to donate or learn about fundraising. As such, I focused my attention on the parent persona, and listed their primary goal as learning more about the program and program related events (a goal that was primary or secondary across all personas). Special attention was later paid to creating happy paths for donors to donate, and for students to learn about particular grade-level cultures in the program. Staff, volunteers and potential donors were also personas that were later factored into later iterations of the site.
Solution
The final website came after a number of interviews, mockups, wireframes, prototypes, a few scares, a lot of lessons, time and patience. The website was designed, but I also had to choose the right software to develop it, so that the staff could have easy access to making changes. After careful review, I selected Webflow as the development tool of choice and created the site based on the research gathered, complete with Google Analytics and CMS customization. The site was first used as their main tool of communication for an upcoming fundraiser, and then for the information around the application process for the summer enrichment program. Both campaigns were considered successful with few errors to tackle along the way. The feedback was overwhelming positive for the two years the site was used. In 2018, Odyssey wanted to branch out further, as discussed, and build the site to hold more data and form collections. This required a level of backend knowledge that was not in my toolkit, and so we amicably parted ways. The front end design of the site is still a product of my initial architecture (as of March 2019) and I would be excited to work with the team again at any time.