The purpose of the C.G. Jung Society, Seattle, is to support a sustainable learning community centered on the life and work of Carl Gustav Jung. I was contacted by the board member to help with the website redesign as a part of the overall rebranding of the organization.
Memberships of the Jung Society dropped 45% from 2019 to 2021 and the membership fees that covered event production, space rental for the library, and staffing admin support are melting. The Board decided to update their events and programming offer and go through the full rebranding to attract new members with a special focus on younger demographics.
Design a responsive website that will enable a consistent user experience across devices that will align with the Society’s target market (based on the research). The Society geos through a full rebranding process and the goal is to increase:
- Newsletter signups
- Member signups by 25%
- Event registration by 50%
My part is in the process was working collaboratively on the new responsive website design along with assets from the illustrator and guidance from the Board. I worked within the Society’s new brand guidelines and iterate according to the feedback from the stakeholder I was getting during weekly meetings. I put special focus on the event signup process as it's one of the first touchpoint that can bring potential future members and revenue to the Society.
I started the process by getting to know the state of the existing product and evaluating the website layout and content in order to discover the main focus areas that can be improved as quick vs long-term fixes and understand what problem or need does the non-profit fulfill. Below are some of the problems I found through heuristic evaluation:
1-on-1 in depth user interviews with younger demographics allowed me to discover the motivations that would encourage their participation in the Society events or joining the organization as members. I interviewed 6 people with interest in psychology to learn more about their habits and motives. Here are the main outtakes:
Top motivations behind interest in psychology are:
Next, I wanted to explore more the functionality and benefits that are offered by the platforms offering similar kind of product - providing knowledge and education. I compared a couple of important components of UI and product in general to discover the areas where the Jung Society experience could improve.
The leaders of the e-commerce market were more advanced when it comes to make their design responsive, highlighting the user benefits, and generally excelling in the usability department.
Based on research findings, I created a persona who repersents the target user of the Society and their needs and habits. This helped me to empathize with the end user on the remaining steps of the design process.
Based on the research and persona discovery, I brainstormed, compiled and organized the necessary website content and functionality. Pre-redesign, the Society’s website was heavy in redundant and obsolete information that didn’t provide much substance. I decided to include the most vital information in the new version to make it clean and easy to navigate.
In the process, I was able to reduce the overall number of pages from 30 down to 8, and the main navigation went down from 7 to 3 links.
I created the user task flow for the event registartion process, that is one of the most important site’s functionality. Task flow assumes a visit by a guest who’s not a member of the Society yet.
After defining the main user task and flow, I attempted to create the first set of lo-fi wireframes to run some preliminary testing with the actual users. That allowed me to gather some initial feedback and save time later in the process before I started the high-fidelity prototype.
The first round of testing I decided to make a couple of iterations that included:
Before developing the first version of UI, I created most of the elements in the UI kit. As I was working with the illustrator who created the logo and illustrations in the spirit of Jung’s philosopy, my goal was to keep the elements I was designing cohesive with the newly-developed branding. I created a simple set of icons, buttons, and a color palette using different shades of the logo. I wanted the new site to represent the more approachable and relaxed version of the Society.
Based on the feedback from initial usability test, I created hi-fi wireframes and a prototype.
Go here to see the full hi-fi prototype.
To get even more insight and feedback on the branding and usability, I tested the prototype on 5 potential users (age 31-39) to get enough feedback to implement it into the second round of iterations. The test validated my registration process with 100% successful completion rate.
User test revealed a list of priority revisions that I implemented to the high-fidelity prototype 1 that included:
Through the synthesis of research results, I discovered major discrepancies between users behaviors and needs and that the Jung Society presents. As I had a very limited timeline to deliver the final product, I decided to present action items in the way that matches the product the Society offers that can be implemented over time.
