Clarifying Language and User Objectives
Removing user road blocks and unclear user goals with landing page language
My Role
UX Writing, Research and co-design
The Team
1 engineer
1 product manager
1 city government liaison
Tools
Figma
Miro
Duration
Ongoing
Process (ongoing)
Empathize
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Audit
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Define the problem
Specify
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Persona Building
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Information architecture
Ideate
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Lofi Wireframes
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Medium Fidelity design
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Interview script
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User recruitment
Interviewing
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Pending
Synthesizing
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Pending
The Challenge
The landing page design had two critical issues:
1) anemic information architecture
2) no clear user objectives
The Goals
Find a clear user objective and have that demonstrated in the new landing page design with language
Lack of clear search field and creates more click states
This button set up creates decision paralysis
Most of this information isn't helpful and creates an overwhelming experience
The nav bar suffers from I.A. issues, neglecting to have an option to take the user to the campaign contributions page. This model proposes to fix that
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User Hypothesis
Our current user hypothesis is that there is at least two personas.
User 1
they have some passing interest in local politics, both local and national. They get the majority of their information from news and their personal network
User 2
This user has an intense interest in local politics. They actively hunt for local political news and information
While these two might not share the same passion they do share the same frustration: having access to anemic campaign finance reporting resources for their political interests.
After examining the pain points in the current design, the research, the user hypothesis and discussions with stakeholders, the goal of the redesign phase is to funnel users into to the campaign data section from the landing page with a secondary goal of signing up for daily alerts.
Wireframe
In this lovely wireframe for the first round of design, my first design priority was decluttering. I wanted the right side simplified, stripping the most relevant information and distilling it into the election snap shot data block.
1st Draft
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As mentioned above, this proposed nav bar redesign fixes the navigation issues.
There was plenty of space in the "above-the-fold" real estate for the sign up section to more prominent.
I originally wanted to put in the word "citizen" but a stakeholder rightly reminded me that "resident" is more inclusive language.
This iteration has a better understanding of user goals, with a simple explanation of the site's purpose and a clear CTA.
Putting the signup after users understand the purpose of the site will earn trust rather than asking for something without reason.
2nd Draft
After a review with the stakeholders and further understanding the new pain points, it was clear that the first draft was unclear in its user objectives. With a more refocused user objective of a) making sure the landing page clearly explained the site's goals and b) having only one CTA above-the-fold.
The most difficult part of the redesign was understanding where to put the "election snapshot" block.
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I wanted an image that gave a visual cue about the data
Next Steps
It is at this point that the design has been taken as far as it can with stakeholders and research. To effectively move forward, user interviews will have to be conducted.
These are the guidelines for our user recruitment
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Is over the age of 18 (more likely the targeted age range will fall within late 40s to mid 60s)
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Has some computer literacy
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Has some interest in local politics, be it passing or passionate
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Can understand elementary data visualization
Due to the diversity within Oakland, it is critical that user interviews not be homogenous for this step.
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An ideal user interview pool would reflect the ethnic, linguistic and income diversity in Oakland.
In addition to refining the persona more, this process will allow us to refine our FAQ section and see if the "final" design needs to have a UI adaptable for language translation.