The Deliverable

The goal was to give ASCA a scalable skeleton of a website they could use to continue to build.  We gave the client a toolkit to use in the future:

• Recommendations and examples of written tone to use in web copy 

• Template for restructured content pages  

• Style guide 

• Actionable recommendations for online Slack community 

Austin CityUp  → Austin Smart City Alliance

Austin CityUp is a non-profit organization with a small but powerful staff  that advocates for, educates about and creates community around smart city technology in Austin, Texas.  The organization wants to increase active membership and expand its influence with Austin residents.  With an important event planned in the near future, they wanted to fast track a new and improved digital presence.  

That’s where the design team comes in.

Our four person design team was charged with rebranding Austin CityUp to Austin Smart City Alliance.  I was the team project manager, Research and Copywriting lead.

→ Constraints ←

As we devised a solution, we knew we had to work within our constraints:

1. CMS platform 2. Payment platforms.  3. Time. 

The problem (statement)

Austin CityUp needs to be able to communicate effectively with Austin residents in order to engage them to impact the outcome of how smart city technology is implemented to improve the lives of Austin residents.

Defining our audience and current conversation

We had to design with two audiences in mind: the Austin public and organization members. I created personas for each of our different target users using a combination of user interviews and extant research.

3 tools the team used to diagnose the site:

1. Content audit, which I assisted the Information Architect in conducting. It revealed that while there was a lot of text on the website, there was less unique content than we expected.  Impact: this allowed the team to focus on elevating the unique content and building space for future content. 

2. Heuristic analysis.  Impact: these conversations revealed that the whole team wanted to focus on a minimalist aesthetic design. 

3. Website analytics.  Impact: revealed the pages with the highest traffic which helped us prioritize 

In conversation with our client, we developed a Minimum Viable Product.  Enumerating these was important for the design team as it allowed us to triage the most important areas to pursue.  By keeping the objective broad, we were able to be flexible when we needed to be.  

Ideating: success had to be centered around the human 

Solution

Understanding our clients’ needs, the design team worked with them to formulate a solution that would work within the constraints and empower them.  In rebranding Austin CityUp to Austin Smart City Alliance gives the team a new tone which will broaden and strengthen the impact of their organization and their mission.

As we imagine our new world, the comparative analysis and two design studios helped the team align on where we could go.  These revealed two important design insights:

1. Compressed navigation.  We needed a clutter free experience.  Result: the Information Architect overhauled the sitemap.

2. New tone.  Aiming for ‘business casual’.  Result: I rewrote all the project pages in this tone.

Usability Testing: Round 1

Abbreviated task scenarios:

1. An Austin resident learns about smart technology public transit projects 

2. A city planner researches how smart city technology is implemented in Austin

3. A visitor becomes a member 

4. A visitor register for an upcoming event

Key Takeaways of Usability Tests:

4/4 Users Were Confused About the Copy 

3/4 Users Understood the Hamburger Menu  

3/4 Users Struggled to Register for an Event

Two significant obstacles we faced came to a head. The struggles of dealing with the chaotic uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic was hitting home for the team at the same time we were confronting the limitations of developing in this particular CMS platform.

The solution? As Project Manager, I invited in outside facilitators and called the team together to have a real conversation about what our path forward looked like. We prioritized our goals, changed direction where needed assigned tasks. 

Usability Testing: Round 2

3/3 Users Were Confused About How to Join

3/3 Users Unable to Locate the CTA to Register for an Event

2/3 Users Expected More Information on Events

1/3 Users Were Confused by the Hamburger Navigation

Next Steps 

• As they had the skeleton of the website, the Austin Smart City Alliance team was able to create and curate content to populate their platform.

• If the design team had stayed on, our next steps would be to flesh out the live pages.  

What I Learned 

• Project managing a remote team is hard.  Establishing shared processes and a mutual understanding of expectations requires the whole team to explicitly catalog them - there is no such thing as overkill in this area.

• A design studio is an effective way to break team gridlock and focus on alignment.    

What I Would Do Differently 

• In addition to daily standups, I would encourage daily deliverables shared out among the group.

• To work within the CMS platform, I would simplify the aesthetics and keep the modular design.