Designing a mobile-friendly experience for newcomers to discover program information seamlessly.
PROJECT oVERVIEW
ACSA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting vulnerable populations in Toronto’s Scarborough area, offers essential resources and services to the community. As part of a design team, I contributed to enhancing ACSA’s website to create a seamless, inclusive experience tailored to newcomers with limited language proficiency. The project prioritized accessibility and usability across both desktop and mobile platforms. Collaborating with two fellow designers and a project manager, I engaged in the full design lifecycle—from conducting user research and synthesizing insights to mapping user flows, developing wireframes, and refining prototypes.
mY ROLE
UX/UI Designer
tIMELINE
May 2022 - Aug 2022
TEAM
3 Designers, 1 Project Manager
tOOLS
Figma, Google Suite, UX Tweak
DISCOVERY
Why a mobile-first approach?
With more immigrants noticing the existence of the ACSA organization, they used ACSA's website for checking social program information, However, the website was not mobile responsive and many clients opted to call ACSA's phone line instead. This created a huge workload on ACSA's customer service staff and caused frustration for users.
USER RESEARCH
Understanding the current experience
We conducted 5 semi-structured interviews online with ACSA staff members who have been with the company for at least 5+ years. The goals of this research were to:
Discover the users’ main objectives when visiting the website, which will help define the main user paths
Explore the challenges they face when trying to achieve their goals
It was found that users of ACSA are individuals from diverse backgrounds, with one common theme— all being newcomers to Canada.
DATA SYSTHESIZE
Finding users' pain points
To organize the interview data, I consolated the info into an affinity map to find emerging trends and pain points of our users .
dEFINE AND SCROPE
Tailoring the experience for immigrants with limited English proficiency
USER PATH
How does pooja discover information currently?
I also mapped out an experience map that outlines how pooja currently discovers information on the ACSA website. This helped me build empathy with my target users and to stay user-centred while identifying opportunity areas where I could intervene with my digital solution to create a seamless user journey.
IDEATION 1 – iNFORMATION DISPLAY
That's when cards come in!
The old website shows all the information in the form of links. For mobile users, it is hard to read a large load of text on a screen, especially for people who do not understand English proficently. The more text, the heavy cognitive load it can bring.
I conducted a competitor analysis and get inspired from other non-profit website to see how they how programs in a clear way and figured out Cards are the way to go!
IDEATION 2 – nAVIGATION bAR
Simplify navigation bar to prioritize what users need
I conducted an open card sorting test with users to learn users’ habits of going through the web navigation. According to the card sorting results, users feel frustrated when choosing between multiple navigation options and their focus in checking programs. Therefore, our team discussed with stakeholders to group similar options under the same tab. Now, the navigation bar is simplifies with only 5 category and the label under "projects" are easy for users to understand and choose.
FINAL DESIGN
User-friendly experience for newcomers
I conducted an open card sorting test with users to learn users’ habits of going through the web navigation. According to the card sorting results, users feel frustrated when choosing between multiple navigation options and their focus in checking programs. Therefore, our team discussed with stakeholders to group similar options under the same tab. Now, the navigation bar is simplifies with only 5 category and the label under "projects" are easy for users to understand and choose.
