Project Type
Information Science Capstone Project
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Challenge
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Redesign the “Get Help” page and pre-qualify form to decrease the volume of ineligible applications
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Make the application requirements more salient to users
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Make the pre-qualification process easier for users, while discouraging ineligible applications
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Timeframe
8 months​
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Key Takeaways
Learning client needs and consistent communication is very important. I learned that the client and our team needed to contact each other consistently to make sure we were all on the same page and that we were delivering a product the client was happy with.
Process
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Team
Elizabeth Bigham, Kara Burke, Catherine Grillo, Angel Ranjel​
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Project Context & Background
The Pink Fund is a non-profit organization that provides support for breast cancer patients in active treatment. A breast cancer diagnosis can create a large financial burden on a patient and their family. Many patients are unable to work during active treatment, resulting in a loss of income and even health insurance for their household. This can greatly impact the well-being and livelihood of a patient as they fight for their lives.
The main focus of this project was to improve the financial assistance section of The Pink Fund’s current website. The work helped the organization’s administration to streamline its application process for its two financial aid programs. Due to recent growth, The Pink Fund has experienced an increase in applications, many of which are ineligible. This project also aimed to mitigate this issue by redesigning the application page.
The project aligned with The Pink Fund’s mission to provide financial assistance to breast cancer patients, as it helped eligible applicants receive the support they needed. We reorganized the website’s information architecture so that the requirements for each financial assistance program are clear and that the application is easy to submit.
Research Phase
Before beginning to redesign the application page, my team carried out different research methods to ensure we were creating the best design we could.
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Comparative Analysis
Comparators were found through research and by asking the client which organizations they believe they are similar to. We were able to identify what parts of The Pink Fund's application process should look like, and learned what does not work on an application page. I learned how to be more observant of web pages and how to assess pages for accessibility and usability.
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Heuristic Evaluation
I, along with my team members, each completed a heuristic evaluation of The Pink Fund's application page. Once completed, we synthesized the findings into a general grade, along with recommendations to improve the design. During this process, I became very familiar with Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics, and how they should fit into a web page.
My Heuristic Evaluation
Full Team Heuristic Evaluation
Employee Interview
Because The Pink Fund consists of a small team, only one employee had the knowledge to provide a useful interview. I was the interviewer, and a teammate of mine sat in on the call to take notes. The interviewee had many important insights that influenced our final design.
Usability Tests
My team wanted to gain a deeper understanding of how new users might perceive the website, so we decided to run a usability test through UserTesting.com. We tested for the clarity of the application page and process, and general usability. The tests revealed that users had a hard time finding out how to apply and what the different programs are. Users also were easily able to bypass The Pink Fund's screening method by lying about their information.
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Research Results
Based on the research, my team learned four main points and synthesized the UX requirements we would be focusing on
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UX Requirements
Results
Personas & Journeys
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Primary Persona & User Journey
Secondary Persona & User Journey
Design Phase
Sketching
The first step in our design process was to brainstorm possible layouts of the get help page through sketching. My sketches are shown below.​
Wireframes
After sketching, we combined our best designs to create wireframes of the Get Help page, the FAQ page, and the new pre-qualification process.
Final Prototype
We then moved on to designing the high-fidelity final prototype of the page. I was in charge of creating the FAQ page, and I also helped create the main Get Help page.
Design Evaluation
After creating the final prototype, my team conducted a second usability test on UserTesting.com with the same tasks as our first test. Based on the results of this test, my team concluded that we had no more major improvements to make to the design as all the participants found the new design easy to navigate and understand.
Road Blocks
Throughout the school year, my team encountered a couple of roadblocks.
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Survey
During our planning phase, my team created a survey for current Pink Fund website users to fill out. This survey was to be placed in The Pink Fund newsletter so people could access it. However, the survey proved to be ineffective due to a lack of responses. We also posted this survey on subreddits, Facebook groups, and reached out to the client to see if there were any other ways to get responses. Unfortunately, this still did not work out so we had to find other ways to gather feedback. Instead of conducting a survey, we each did a heuristic evaluation, and we ran a usability test. These alternate methods proved to be effective in gathering research insights.
Client Communication
Another roadblock we encountered was trying to stay in consistent communication with our client. There were many occasions when my team would reach out multiple times to the client and would not hear back in time to make appropriate changes. We also were not able to reach out about how and when we wanted the survey included in the newsletter, which contributed to the lack of responses. After expressing that we were on tight deadlines, the client became much more communicative and we were able to spend the second half of the year consistently communicating with the client.
Takeaways
While working on this project, I learned many important things. First, it is important to communicate clearly and effectively while working with a client. Without proper communication, things will not be done correctly. I learned this the hard way after not properly communicating with the client at the beginning of this project. By the end, we were able to communicate clearly and effectively, which made things run much smoother.
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Another takeaway I have from this project is the importance of working in a team. Because each team member I worked with had different strengths, we were able to divide work effectively and do the best we could. For example, I had experience in research, so I led much of the research phase. Two other teammates were stronger in design, so they were the leaders for the design documents in Figma. We all worked really well together because we learned to communicate effectively and pick up work in areas we specialized in.