Street Youth Ministry
Responsive Web Redesign /
Phase 1: Navigation
DURATION
2 Months
PROJECT TYPE
Freelance
Website Redesign
Responsive
ROLE
Research
UX/UI Designer
Testing
TEAM
1 Product Designer
5 Stakeholders
“TO KNOW, LOVE AND SERVE STREET YOUTH.”
Street Youth Ministry is a local non-profit that works to uplift homeless youth in Austin and San Marcos.
SYMIN serves youth individuals 28 and under who are at risk for displacement or who are currently homeless. SYMIN is unique in that they offer peer guidance to help clients set and achieve goals.
CURRENT STATE: THE PROBLEM + GOAL
Information is difficult to locate because the site’s structure and page contents aren’t clearly organized.
Discover what information each user type values most so that we can improve the usability of SYMIN’s website to:
Better connect clients with counseling services
Increase volunteer registration
HIERARCHY
Essential information is buried.
When efforts are spent helping users find info, time spent engaging with clients decreases.
TEXT VOLUME
Users struggle to quickly learn how to get started.
Shown is a screengrab of a page for Volunteers.
5 ways to volunteer are described, but there lacks obvious assistance (CTAs, links, etc.) in helping people sign up.
STYLING
The site’s colors and typography are hard on the eyes.
All interview participants expressed concern about the color choices and font pairings.
IDENTIFY THE AUDIENCE
Create personas of SYMIN’s 3 main user-types to serve as anchor points for design decisions.
KEY SOLUTIONS
Simplify the navigation.
How can we support users in quickly finding the information they’re looking for?
Designate primary pages as those that cater to major user types.
Merge pages that cover similar content.
Reduce the # of nav pages from 9 to 5.
Card sorting participants created a median of 6 groups using existing site pages.
5/9 pages either stand alone or lack multiple secondary or tertiary pages in the dropdown.
Highlight the 3 major audiences of SYMIN: Clients, Volunteers and Donors.
Merge pages that cover similar content.
Nearly 30% of all pages have <15 s. engagement time and low view counts.
In 2022, 19 pages received less than 10 views.
Pages are redundant, invalid and/or have outdated info.
Currently, there are 27 active pages out of 75, 99 buttons and 34 out-links.
Many elements repeat throughout the site that lead to the same place, and active pages can be consolidated to decrease redundancy.
Using different labels for the same info leads people to think that there’s more info than there actually is.
6 subjects have multiple pages that can be combined.
TEST TO VALIDATE
The solution has an average success rate of 82%.
I arrived at this solution by conducting 2 Tree Tests, where an average of 37 participants were recruited to complete 10 tasks.
NEW NAVIGATION
Success Metrics
All testers completed 100% of the tasks with no skips.
81% of testers ended up at the correct answer.
35/43 testers selected the correct answer for every question.
8/10 tasks’ correct answer received 60% - 80% of participants’ first clicks.
TREE TEST REPORTDesign Iterations informed by Tree Tests
“Services in Austin” → “Help in Austin”
SUCCESS RATE: 39% → 91% (52% increase)
In Round 1, there was only a 39% success rate in finding the page about client services in Austin.
Using the word “Help” instead of “Services” makes it clearer that this page is for street youth in Austin.
This is shown by a 52% success rate increase with this update.
“Our Needs” → “Item Needs”
SUCCESS RATE: 45% → 72% (27% increase)
In Round 1, there was only a 45% success rate in finding the page about donation needs.
Using the word “Item” instead of “Our” makes it explicit that this page details what physical things are needed, whereas the former label is vague and implies that the page covers needs beyond physical relief.
This is supported by a 27% success rate increase in Round 2.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
Explicitly name pages to avoid cognitive strain and reduce backtracking.
SYMIN has various types of content categories and sub-categories, and clear labels help users decipher between subjects.
Reduce page count by merging similar ones.
This reduces the amount of navigation steps required and supports users in finding relevant info in a singular place.
Cluster topics for each user type to streamline tasks and journeys.
Clients, volunteers and donors can quickly find what they’re looking for in the simplified navigation.
