Scholar CC

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Scholar Career Coaching is a non-profit organization that aims to bridge the education gap for minority and first-gen students. Their mission is to coach, motivate, and support students through mentoring services and scholarship assistance.

VISIT SITE

TOOLS:
Figma, Wordpress, HTML, CSS

TIMELINE:
October 2023 - January 2024

TEAM:
‍Phung N , Harin K
Kayleigh P, Ruby W
Grace L, Jin Kim N

MY ROLE:
‍UX Designer

MY CONTRIBUTIONS:
Collaborated with team through end-to-end design process, Wordpress implementation, and website launch

THE CHALLENGE

Scholar Career Coaching is focused on supporting underserved students, including first-generation and ESL students, in achieving their post-high school goals. Scholar CC provides services such as mentoring, tutoring, and scholarships, all aimed at empowering these students with the skills and knowledge they need for success. The organization has a lot of information about their different programs and events. Their current website is outdated with cluttered information and a lack of cohesive branding.

The Goal

Our task is to revamp Scholar CC's current website, implementing engaging elements and clear information architecture to create an immersive experience for visitors, allowing them to better connect with the impactful work Scholar Career Coaching focuses on. We collected feedback and insights from user interviews with nonprofit stakeholders and students to understand the various audiences Scholar Career Coaching’s website caters to.

Researching the nonprofit webscape

‍Before starting the user research process, we conducted a direct and indirect competitor analysis to identify, evaluate, and analyze other non-profits. We evaluated their websites by drawing insights on user-friendliness, call-to-actions, and user flow features.
‍Completed competitor analysis that we conducted on direct and indirect competitors.
DIRECT COMPETITORS

‍The direct competitors that we looked at were non-profits whose missions were similar to that of Scholar CC. Of these direct competitors, we referenced BreakThroughMiami, CollegePossible, and ThriveScholars most frequently.

‍How is Scholar Career Coaching different?
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‍ScholarCC stands out with its tailored approach for English as a Second Language Students, First-Gen, and DACA students, allowing us to prioritize essential elements for a user-friendly website.

Features include:
• Simplified design for varied tech literacy
• Quick CTAs for mentees and mentors that are strategically placed in prominent locations throughout the website, ensuring they are easily noticeable and accessible to users
• Clear, easy-to-understand labels/verbiage to ensure accessibility for users with varying levels of English proficiency

USER INTERVIEWS

‍The objective of our user interviews was to gather insights and feedback from potential and current users who may interact with SCC’s (Scholar Career Coaching) current website. The interview aimed to identify pain points, attitudes, and opinions users have towards the website, as well as to understand how they interact with it and seek information. These insights helped inform design decisions behind creation of our information architecture, as well as our low-fidelity and high-fidelity designs.

10 people were interviewed in total, with 4 of them having a direct association with SCC.
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KEY INSIGHTS

Meet Our Target Users‍

With better understanding of our users and keeping their goals, needs, and paintpoints in mind, we began to design the site.‍

Information Architecture

‍From the User Interviews we commonly noticed users’ confusion in navigating information around the website. There were many overlapping navigations, frustrating users on which to click to find what they need. To combat this, we minimized the number of primary and secondary navigation menu items, and combined pages that delivered similar content to reduce the number of clicks.
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Original Site Map‍

New Site Map‍

Style Guide‍

Initial Designs

Final Designs