To begin the process, we conducted a two-hour kickoff meeting with the staff at HPAC to discuss their users and goals for the website. We created user personas for the site (low level donors, sponsors, parents/neighborhood, teachers, alliance members, staff and volunteers, and press), and facilitated a discussion in which we worked through the use cases of each persona, and then discussed the appropriate primary call to action for each group.

 

Based on these discussions, we constructed a site map with intuitive navigation to ensure all personas’ use cases were covered (that they could find the information they were seeking), and to ensure that we were directing them to take the action we wanted them to take.

When the site map was complete, we constructed low-fidelity wireframes that Katie turned into beautiful visual designs that reflected the colorful, upbeat (but polished) visual vibe of the organization.