The Leprosy Mission Nigeria (TLMN) is an international development organization that aims to bring healing and restoration to people affected by leprosy and other neglected tropical diseases as well as people living with disabilities.

The goal of this project was to Improve the online web experience for users that showcases the work done by the mission, increase revenue generated through donations, increase online volunteer conversion and give the TLM brand a new facelift from the old website

Starting off the project

My approach began with seeking to get a better understanding of the current state of the development and nonprofit sector in Nigeria, the reason for this research was to understand the challenges and frustrations of both the owners and also the users (Donors and Volunteers) to better understand how to appeal to them.  
Competitive analysis was done on similar websites for nonprofits operating within Nigeria.

Starting with the internal stakeholders and teams, i had several calls and in-person meetings probing and gaining insights from them. These meetings and interview sessions revealed pain points and issues they had with the existing online website. particularly amongst many of the complaints were low donations and volunteer signups.

Speaking with internal business stakeholders from the country director, the IT and Comms team and other important stakeholders was very important considering the this was a website refresh for a website that had not been updated in such a long time, their feedback was very valuable

The design process

Identifying research participants

After speaking and engaging with the internal team. My research shifted focus to the users and this was divided into two main categories

I proceeded to conduct user interviews and qualitative research with these two user groups starting primarily with volunteers and donors who are in the leprosy missions network, and spreading it out to other external users who had either volunteered or donated to similar projects in the past.

Contextual Inquiries

In addition to in-person user interviews, we also conducted some contextual inquiries for volunteers and donors by observing how they navigated the website and asking them to perform tasks like signing up to volunteer and make a donation.

Overall i discovered that they had performing tasks that seemingly would be considered easy or straightforward.  It was a key indicator that the overall usability of the website needed to be worked on

Competitor analysis

I  analyzed some of The Leprosy Missions competitor in the development and non profit space in Nigeria and uncovered some of the strengths and weaknesses of 3 competitors namely Unicef Nigeria, Nigerian Red Cross and Save the Children Nigeria

Well defined goals

After completing my interviews, I summarized the findings in a UX audit report and met with the leprosy mission team.
We reviewed the data and findings, establishing goals for the website redesign: growing the online volunteer base, boosting donor conversion, and decreasing donor and volunteer churn. In short, our plan was to:

Summarizing findings into persona’s

All the data and results gathered were synthesized to produce 3 personas as ideal users of the website. Understanding a general sense of the target audience gave me insights on how the website will appeal to different demographics with different needs.

Information Architecture

To define and guide the the vision for the website with my learnings from research conducted, I created a site map of the new website that incorporated the all my learnings based on response trends and  laid out the structure and organization of the content on the site.

Sketches and low fidelity prototypes

I then went ahead to create mid fidelity wireframes as a skeletal framework of the website to help me keep my focus on functionality without any visual aesthetics added

Mid Fidelity Prototypes

I then went ahead to create mid fidelity wireframes as a skeletal framework of the website to help me keep my focus on functionality without any visual aesthetics added

Style Guide

Using the existing brand elements and assets available for the Leprosy Mission brand, it was important to ensure consistency and an overall visual appeal by creating a set of rules and guidelines that is clear to help me ensure a usable and intuitive visual for our users.These elements include typography, identifiable brand colors, customizable UI components , clear CTA’s etc.

Colours

Staying in order with the pre existing brand colors the color palette is made up of colors from the logo but with the inclusion of an accent color

Logo

Typography

A humanist geometric font Museo sans was chosen because it is not only robust and highly legible, but it can also be used in both display and text font sizes.

High Fidelity Prototypes - Homepage

A humanist geometric font Museo sans was chosen because it is not only robust and highly legible, but it can also be used in both display and text font sizes.

Changes made

Orgarnising Information

The old website had everything everywhere thrown together, it was important to use information architecture to rethink and organize information in a clear, usable and legible order

Making impact visible

It was important that from a glance users are able to see and feel the impact of the mission. this was done by emphasizing the work their do and their impact numbers, documenting and highlighting success stories and stories of change amongst others

Bringing donation to the fore front

by intelligently placing call to action buttons and creating copy to drive donor conversion, we were able to make donations one of the visible highlights of the homepage.

Full Homepage Redesign

View live website

Volunteering

Changes made

Making Volunteering Visible

Ensuring that Volunteers for specific events or causes can get informed by using dedicated CTA Sections on the homepage

Removing the clutter

By creating a simple volunteer signup form for intending volunteers, users could fill a form and get contacted by TLM Admins

Donation

Changes made

Clean up the form and Support Local payment methods

Redesigning the donation page by collecting only important information from donors as well as ensuring that multiple local payment methods are supported

Recurrent donation

Enabling donors to choose to give a specific amount recurrently

Email templates

A cross section of other pages

Learnings

Working on this project opened my eyes to not just the importance of presenting health facts and making information about diseases accessible and consumable, but to the impact properly implemented design and research can have in impacting lives.

I love human centered development projects like this and thats not to say there weren't challenges in the overall process interfacing with the teams and departments, volunteers and donors, above all, the rewards of implementing UX processes transcended their website to even influencing and driving certain changes in their internal systems and processes.

When the new build was deployed, in the first couple of weeks we had recorded quite an increase both in volunteer signup for the World leprosy day drive they had and also quite an increase in donations received. This is was driven primarily by the new design which also influenced their internal processes of communications to donors and sharing volunteering opportunities across other mediums.