Background

Our National Conversation is a non-profit organization dedicated towards reducing partisanship in politics and bringing the power of political knowledge to the younger generation. The site implements a news aggregator and combines that with homegrown opinion essays, short-form video content, engaging graphics, and more.

Before I joined the team, user research had just been conducted for the current, live website. Our first job as interns was to make sure our re-designs were research backed from the previous round of testing and data collection.

Our National Conversation is a non-profit organization dedicated towards reducing partisanship in politics and bringing the power of political knowledge to the younger generation. The site implements a news aggregator and combines that with homegrown opinion essays, short-form video content, engaging graphics, and more.

Before I joined the team, user research had just been conducted for the current, live website. Our first job as interns was to make sure our re-designs were research backed from the previous round of testing and data collection.

Synthesizing Prior Research

Previous research included target demographic surveys, heuristic evaluations, SWOT analysis, interviews, and more. Looking at our collected data, we compiled common user pain points and set goals for our re-design.

Prototypes/Iterations

Before working on new site sketches and wireframes, our team created a navigation flow in order to establish hierarchies in our website and streamline user navigation. During later testing, this flow was changed again per C-suite feedback.

While creating wireframes, we kept in mind our audience feedback and focused on creating an organized and modern layout with smaller text. These wireframes allowed us to easily group topics and were shared with internal stakeholders for quick feedback.

Afterwards, we created multiple mid and high fidelity prototypes of each page. These designs were discussed and redesigned many times within the UI/UX team.

Following audience feedback, we created and followed a style guide to ensure consistency between pages and maintain a professional quality to our design. The use of proper grouping was also done to improve functionality and easy, at-a-glance browsing.

ver 1

ver 2

ver 3

New Usability Testing

With these new prototypes came another round of research and usability testing to make sure that we were on the right track with our designs! This time, due to time constraints and team size, our process consisted of interviewing five people outside of ONC.

• Pre-Interview Google Form: to determine basic demographics and user patterns
• Virtual Zoom Interview: asking pre-written (non-leading) questions to test site usability and functionality. Also conducted A/B testing for aesthetic purposes.
• Post-Interview Google Form: to gather additional feedback

Compared to the previous round of testing and research, user opinions were overwhelmingly positive on most aspects of the new redesign. Here is some of that data:

• Initial thoughts about the re-designed website were mostly positive, with most users liking the new homepage.
• 100% of users were able to understand what ONC was about based on the homepage and later confirmed their understandings through the About Us page.
• 100% of users were able to successfully navigate to the Proposals, News, Forums, and Opinions page showing that our page titles matched user expectations.
• Overall thoughts when navigating through the ONC website were very positive. Most users thought the overall design elevated the credibility of the site.

We also had some informative feedback and comments.

• Most users were unsure if Proposals, Opinions, and Podcasts were outsourced or created by internal ONC members.
• Some users navigated to the News page when looking to learn about policies rather than the Explain That page.
• One user thought the News page was much more image-heavy when compared to traditional news sites that were more text-heavy.

In addition to audience feedback, we also received comments and feedback on the redesigns from the C-suite. This included suggestions for:

• Making the navigation bar more concise and short
• Changing the color of some parts of the site
• Making the ONC “brand” more known throughout the site

Final Designs

Our most recent designs are mostly rooted on the usability tests and prior research, and a little bit from internal voting and C-suite feedback. These changes reflects a slightly modified navigation flow, removing some redundant buttons/sections, rewriting descriptions so pages could better match user expectations, adding spacing for ads, and some other aesthetic changes like incorporating more brand color.

If you're interested in the specifics of our research or the interactive mobile prototype, please contact me for more information and access!

End

The ONC website redesign was a very informative learning experience! Special thanks to my team leads (Serge and Callie), the other UI/UX interns I worked with (Jenny, Samantha, Michelle) and the rest of the ONC team.

Here are just some of the key takeaways from this experience:

• Human-centered designs benefit everyone. By centering user wants and needs, designs are more focused and will take less tweaking in the end. Putting accessibility first will lead to  more intuitive and user friendly products that help everyone enjoy the browsing process.
• Balancing both internal and external stakeholder needs is essential. While redesigning pages, sometimes we had to weigh the suggestions from internal stakeholders like the C-suite with data from users. Consistent communication and properly explaining research findings and design principles to non-designers was key to keeping the design process from being bogged down.
• Drafts are drafts for a reason. First drafts and lo-fi prototypes don’t need to be pixel perfect. Knowing when to “sketch” and when to be precise helped me stay productive.