We R Next Generation

OVERVIEW

We R Next Generation, referred to as the client, is a non-profit organization that is committed to promoting innovation and creativity in children. They currently have camps held in Nigeria and Washington D.C. to give children a safe space to express themselves and expand their imagination.

PROBLEMS

Fluid Designs was hired for a website redesign as the client’s current site now required more functionality due to their quick pace of growth. The one page site was very simple with a contact form at the bottom which allowed parents to enroll their children into the camps. The client also struggled to manage and process applications since no CMS (Content Management System) was in place. We needed to solve these issues by redesigning the consumer site and creating a CMS.

REQUIREMENTS

• Redesign Customer Site
• Redesign Application Processes for Parents, Volunteers, and Partners
• Create Content Management System
• Ability to Edit Customer Site on CMS Site
• Record all camp member information

PROCESS

Through several stakeholder interviews and meetings with the developers, we developed the basic user flows that needed to be designed in order for the company to grow and become more efficient with their growing number of users. Another designer and I took initiative to design the CMS.

CONSUMER SITE

We started our research with a competitive analysis of the summer camp market which allowed us to get a feel for what’s working and not working for other founders on their sites. We followed it up with a heuristic analysis of the original site, making note of potential quick fixes as well as allowing us to gain an overall feel for the direction of the organization.  Additionally, we designed a survey to see what would work best for parents enrolling their children in camp. We wanted to know how they preferred to communicate and what would make the enrolment process smoother for them. From this information we were able to ascertain user needs and develop potential personas.

CMS

The CMS, or the Admin site is the side that I designed although I gave feedback, insights, and knew the ramifications/connections of the customer facing site. While the consumer site was fairly straight forward, the CMS took a little more research. We did several stakeholder interviews to nail down what they wanted as well as what makes sense from both a design and development standpoint. We decided it was important to include: a record of all the members, a way to manage and process applications, and the ability to easily edit the front-end site. We needed to add all of this keeping in mind that the developers we were working with had very little experience just graduating from a boot camp.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

INITIAL SKETCHES

CONSUMER SITE

CMS

LOW FIDELITY WIREFRAMES

We knew the client wanted to keep it simple while expanding it. They also wanted a way to manage and process applications through the CMS. We needed to offer more information for parents, an easier way for the parents to enroll their children in the camps, as well as include space for children to share their creative experiences online.

Consumer Site

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CMS

STYLE GUIDES/VISUAL DESIGN

As the logo was already designed, we used it as a starting point for our visual design. We knew their main colors were two distinct shades of orange and that they wanted to express the creativity that is at the heart of their camps. With this in mind, we carefully selected the fonts and colors as well as put together a style guide for the components we would use, to ensure cohesiveness and consistency across the site. Bolder and more diverse colors for the customer facing site. Toned down shades of orange and a single accent color for the CMS.

END PRODUCT

For the customer facing site, we chose complimentary colors based on the logo. We started by brainstorming how we wanted parents and other members who visited the site to feel. We thought it was important for the site to radiate a sense of fun, playfulness and creativity.

We ended up with a clean and modern CMS that will allow employees to process and manage applications, donations, and possible partnerships more easily, as well as store the children’s contact information, and email communications. I learned a lot working on this website working with my design team scattered across the world, the project manager and developer team located in Chicago, and the stakeholder located in Africa. This 3 month project resulted in a highly efficient, attractive, and user friendly website for both customers and employees.