The Georgia Innocence Project wants to prioritize public awareness and the issue of wrongful incarceration, but its existing design makes it difficult for users to access educational content.
Georgia Innocence Project
Responsive Web Design
Interaction Designer among a team of 4 managing:
Heuristic Evaluation, Information Architecture, User Flow, Prototyping, Interaction Design
Role and Responsibilities:
Timeline:
2 weeks
The Project:
Georgia Innocence Project (GIP) is an independent nonprofit organization that works to correct and prevent wrongful convictions in Georgia. their mission is to:
● Free the imprisoned innocent
● Educate the public about the issue of wrongful convictions
● Advance practices to prevent others from suffering the same fate
● Connect the exonerated with resources to help rebuild their lives
The Challenge:
While our team was immediately drawn to the Georgia Innocence Project's mission, it was clear that the existing website design did not adequately convey the importance of GIP's work or meet stakeholder goals. Clunky navigation, confusing IA and outdated visual design all contributed to a sorely lacking user experience. Our team only had two weeks to complete the redesign, so we quickly jumped into the Discovery Phase to determine the most important pain points to address.
The Solution:
The team believed that providing a more compelling user experience for users who want to learn and contribute to the Georgia Innocence Project will provide more exposure for the brand and generate more assistance for the foundation. This will prevent future wrongful convictions and give the imprisoned more of a fighting chance.
Stakeholder Interview:
During our stakeholder interview, the GIP communications director mentioned that because they are such a small organization, they don't actually have volunteer opportunities for most citizens.
Instead, their goal for the website is to educate the general public, raise awareness of the organization, and connect with students for internships.
Because they rely heavily on donations and intern work, we also wanted to draw attention to these areas.
Surveys:
After determining the primary stakeholder needs, we wanted to gather feedback from the community to better understand the public perceptions regarding wrongful incarceration, as well as individual volunteer behaviors. We created a brief anonymous survey through SurveyMonkey that was posted on both Facebook and Instagram. The survey was posted to communities in Facebook groups that focused on local volunteering and political activism.
We ultimately gathered 44 responses over the course of 7 days, with most respondents between the ages of 30-50.
User Interviews
Using quantitative & qualitative data from our survey results and stakeholder interview, I developed an interview script to gain further insight on user beliefs regarding social justice, wrongful incarceration, and the criminal justice system.
Because our survey results revealed that most participants do not actively volunteer and reported minimal awareness of wrongful incarceration, I worked to frame questions in a manner that would minimize causing participant guilt.
The team conducted 5 user interviews via Zoom, recruiting survey participants that represented differing racial, socio-economical, and educational demographics.
Affinity Diagram with key insightsHeuristic Evaluation:
The homepage includes no content other than a hero image, navigation is clunky and non-intuitive, and there are no actual volunteer opportunities listed (despite including an entire page just for volunteering.). Besides existing cases, all informational content is buried several links deep in the GIP blog -- which cannot be accessed from the main navigation. Alarmingly, we also noticed that several pages and all footer text did not meet WCAG guidelines.
Final Prototype (Desktop):
Final Prototype (Mobile):
Style Guide:
Final Thoughts and Takeaways:
What the team and I accomplished in 2 weeks nothing of amazing
Working with these talented individuals I feel were able to create something that we all could be proud of.
Looking at what we finished there are still plenty of things to improve with future iterations:
● redesigning the applicant onboarding process for new cases
● more micro-interactions
● smoother mobile interaction
But nonetheless, I am happy with how we created a streamlined and engaging design that made it easier for users to learn, engage, and support the Georgia Innocence Project.