February 2025
Service Design
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While at Georgia Tech, one of our assignments was to partner with a nonprofit organization and re-design their website (or other digital tools, if applicable). One of my collaborators pushed to help Tallahasee Big Dog Rescue; Tallahassee BDR is an organization that aims to save animals (not just dogs) from euthanasia. Upon reviewing their current website and mission statement, we opted to select them as the nonprofit to help!
Tallahassee BDR is entirely volunteer-led, has limited funds, primarily uses social media to advertise and communicate, and points people to their website to begin any adoption processes (adoption application).
Based on a variety of generative research, we came to the conclusion that the website itself has suffered over time; there are different eras of the website all still active and connected destroying a lack of visual cohesion. We first created a survey to screen for user research participants; we wanted to identify users with and without pets and identify deeper pain points involved with pet ownership, fostering pets and general volunteering tendencies.
Some overarching themes from our user research include:
1. Users haven’t been volunteering as much due to the pandemic
2. Pet ownership concerns: lack of veterinary knowledge, can’t afford to kennel fees when traveling, worried about leaving pet at home while working
3. Users are more open to fostering animals than they originally thought
4. Users highly value a sense of trust when giving monetary donations to a nonprofit
5. Most users who are open to getting a pet wanted to adopt from a shelter/rescue
6. Users like familiarity: volunteering with friends, at familiar places, for specific causes
7. Users are scared of adopting a violent animal
Based on our research, we determined that there are three primary personas for BDR: the adopter, the volunteer, and the fosterer.
After combing through additional affinity diagram insights from an evaluation of the current site, we prioritized features for our MVP and created a user flow diagram based on the three personas we identified.
During this stage of ideation, we also conducted a card sorting exercise of terminology from the current website to improve upon the current sitemap; we disagreed on how to organize pets (ex. big dogs, little dogs, etc) and also on certain language (ex. “contact us” vs. “connect”). We opted to inquire further about these during our next round of user research.
Since we were working remotely, we collaboratively assembled low-fidelity wireframes in Figma: this gave us the chance to talk about heuristic design decisions before we received user feedback.
We agreed to preserve as much as possible of the current BDR brand identity: purple and orange as their primary and secondary colors respectively. However, we opted to pick new fonts, create a new logo, and create some new components to make the site feel refreshed but cohesive.
We ended up assembling our high fidelity prototype much quicker than expected so we opted to conduct most of our usability testing with said prototype.
A/B Testing: we tested various pet profile layouts, calls to action (buttons), homepage layouts, and pet adoption form applications. Users provided great commentary and were overall decisive about which variants were better.
Other Design Decisions: since we didn’t have ample time, we decided to have semi-structured usability testing as our main method for the final round of user research. Based on what users said, we probed deeper and made a few final design decisions: we agreed on what to use as a primary call-to-action and also phrasing for asking for donations/assistance.
The biggest challenge, along with other school projects, was the lack of time given to us. We only had a few weeks to get from picking an organization to handing off our final project deck. As a result, we didn’t get to conduct as much testing as we would have liked. We also wanted to create a slightly more robust design system to make the site as cohesive as possible; lack of cohesion was one of the most confusing aspects of the old site so we wanted to make absolutely certain we were making the new site perfect. Lastly, it was difficult not having more realistic user interview insights; we desperately wanted to interview actual BDR volunteers.
We managed to maintain scope creep remarkably well; our ideation phase ended with a very solid list of MVP requirements which kept us firmly on track. We received feedback that we did an outstanding job with visual elements and branding. Lastly, we came up with a realistic strategy to deliver a new site if we ended up being asked to do so! There were a few future projects we had in mind: integrating a volunteer signup form within their calendar, further iteration of the lengthy adoption form, and a way to make an appointment to see a specific pet from the pet profile pages.
