Intro
The Los Angeles Department of Aging (LADOA) is an organization that provides community-based services to seniors and their caregivers to ensure the highest quality of life as possible and remain in the community.
Client: LA City Department of Aging (DOA)
Roles: UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher
Tools: Sketch App, Draw.io, Google Analytics, Marvel, Whiteboard, Google docs, Pen & Paper, Keynote
Platform: Desktop (Responsive Website)
Problem
The Department of Aging’s website has rich content that, if presented in a clearer format, can help our senior citizens and their caregivers easily access valuable data about the services and benefits the City has to offer. Some of the major challenges with the current design include:
• Outdated Visual Design
• Broken Links and Stale Data
• Confusing Navigation (Repeated Data, Wrong Labels, Hard-to-use Forms)
Design Goal
The goal was to create a fresh looking and easy to use website for our senior citizens and their caregivers with having the accessibility standards in mind. Also focusing on presenting the Programs and Services in the clearest possible way.
Redesign Snapshots
Research
In this phase, based on the project needs, different research methodologies were applied to better understand the existing issues with the current design and the users' pain-points. These steps are as follows:
1. Heuristic Evaluation: This method helped determine which usability issues are being violated.
2. Competitive and Comparative Analysis: By conducting C&C analysis of other cities' aging departments we were able to understand what programs and services they are offering to their senior citizens and also get a sense of some common practices in these organizations. Another goal was to compare the visual elements and features.
3. Content Audit and Current Sitemap: In order to understand the existing structure and navigation we had to lay out the current sitemap and comb through the layers of the website. We also conducted a thorough round of content audit on all pages of the existing site to spot the broken links (marked as red flags) and identify outdated or repetitive content.
4. Google Analytics and Persona: After doing some market research and scrutinizing the current website it was time to turn our focus on the users and get to know our audience better. Using google analytics report helped identify our target demo and most visited pages on the website.
Ideation & Design
The gathered data from the research phase helped us redirect our thoughts and come up with a new design with having both the users' needs and the organization's mission in mind. Some of the methods used in this step are as follows:
1. Card Sorting Exercise with the Stakeholders: Now that we had dissected different parts of the website and had laid out the information architecture, we found out some taxonomies are irrelevant or the labelings are confusing. As an example, some languages or abbreviations that were used as labels or in the contents were only understandable by the people within the organizations and not the actual users. As a result, we needed to sit down with the stakeholders and find alternative and more friendly names for these categories.
2. Creating a Mega Menu: Since Programs and Services are the biggest and most important data set on the Aging website we needed to find an efficient way to display this information in a clean and comprehensible fashion. Based on research and gathered data, we figured one feature that could help us accomplish this goal is using a Mega Menu. At this step we made sure we are applying the Hick’s law's criteria to have understandable and alphabetically ordered titles.
3. Hi-Fidelity Mockups & Clickable Prototype: Mockups were created in Sketch and clickable prototype was created on Marvel, where we had multiple rounds of revisions with the stakeholders. After the edits were done all the documents and assets were shared with the stakeholders through Google Docs.
Old vs. New Design
Currently the new website is under development and it should go live in a couple of months. Please check back later as I'm going to share the link here.
Thanks for reading all the way through and feel free to shoot me an email if you have any questions. :)