Deliverables:
User research
UX strategy
UX/UI design
Background
Designability provide products that enable disabled children and adults to live with greater choice and independence. They also work with nationally recognised leaders in disability and design across public life, academia and business to run and publish research projects. I was brought on to facilitate the complete redesign of their company website.
Defining our vision for the site
Through a series of workshops, I worked closely with Designability’s internal teams to map their organisational structure, their individual departments challenges and their key audience groups. This approach was fundamental to aligning department stakeholders around a shared vision for the new site as well as redefining the original brief.
Putting users first
Through online surveys and depth interviews with end users I was able to validate, discredit and expand upon our learnings and findings from stakeholders to create a set of user personas and journey maps for each of our key audience groups. These were then used to establish our content strategy and site map for the site.
Accessible content
Designability’s audience is broad and varied. From leading academics in their field to carers and people living with disabilities. We knew that ensuring these audiences were correctly catered for was paramount to the project’s success. A great deal of care was taken to ensure that our content structure was both highly accessible and engaging for these various groups.
Design for accessibility
We realised early on that we would need to cater for a wide range of accessibility needs, from users with visual impairments to those living with dementia. Our typography was selected for strong legibility, colours for their high contrast and animation used to aid with navigation. We also coded the site from the ground up to make it navigable via the keyboard and fully compatible with screen readers.
A flexible content system
We created a highly flexible and modular content management system that allowed the in-house team complete control of the site structure after handover. Resource material was also produced to assist with training and guidance to ensure that the learnings and insights gathered were upheld and adhered to at all times during this process.
