Orcasound Website Redesign
Client
Orcasound
Role
Year
2023
Team
Project Manager, UX Researcher
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Context
Orcasound is a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting people with live underwater audio streams of orcas and other marine life in the Pacific Northwest. By partnering with scientists, educators, and conservationists, Orcasound helps raise awareness about the importance of ocean health and marine biodiversity. Their network of hydrophones provides real-time access to whale sounds, offering a powerful tool for both public engagement and scientific research.
Orcasound's mission is deeply rooted in community-driven conservation. As a grassroots organization, they rely heavily on public support and donations to sustain their efforts, maintain equipment, and expand outreach. With a growing online audience and increasing interest in marine conservation, Orcasound needed a more effective way to translate this interest into action.
The Challenge
Creating an easy to read webpage so that users can easily donate to Orcasound's efforts, as well as to organizations within their network.
- Focus on Donation Call to Actions (CTAs)
- Bring partner organizations to the forefront
- Minimize the amount of copy on the page while still conveying the mission and impact of Orcasound
How might we build a digital experience that encourages users to donate to Orcasound and view our partner organizations?
Process
Discovery
We conducted 12 user interviews to understand pain points and mapped the existing user journey. Key findings revealed confusion around navigation and feature discoverability.
Definition
What are we trying to achieve?
Building a web app that encourages end-users to donate to Orcasound, as well as learning about the important work of our partners.
How do we plan to drive this?
- Make “Donate/Support” CTAs prominent and accessible
- Show ways to donate to the organization
- Bring partner organizations to the forefront
- Allow users to discover more about our partners
Ideation
Through iterative prototyping and usability testing, we refined the information architecture and created a new visual design system.
Design & Prototyping
Through iterative prototyping and usability testing, we refined the information architecture and created a new visual design system.
Decision: 1
Modification of the navigation bar to allow for easier browsing. Updating the nav bar to be more consistent with today's best practices.
Decision: 2
Adding a "Donate" button to the navigation bar to make it more prominent and accessible. This allows users to easily find and access the donation page from anywhere on the site.
Decision: 3
Adding a "Partners" section to the homepage to bring partner organizations to the forefront. This allows users to easily discover and learn about the important work of our partners, which can help build trust and encourage donations.
Validation
We ran A/B tests with 5,000 users to validate our design decisions before full rollout. The new design resulted in a 60% increase in findability of the Donate page, 25% increase in donations and a 15% increase in partner organization engagement.
Hand-off
Collaborated closely with developers to ensure the design was implemented accurately and efficiently, resulting in a seamless user experience.
Solution
The final design system included 50+ components and comprehensive documentation, resulting in a 40% improvement in task completion rates.
- Brendan Thatcher, UX Lead at OrcasoundChristian was highly engaged with the team and doing individual work during his time at Orcasound with me. I was impressed with his ability to contribute to discussions during stand ups and help make decisions as part of the product team. I know wherever he ends up, he will provide a high level of impact.
