School Network Website

Friendship Public Charter School is a high-performing, multi-campus school network graduating curious, confident, college-ready scholars in pre-K through 12.

Overview

FriendshipSchools.org is a charter school district website which serves multiple users. Priorities for the site are to increase teacher applications and student enrollment.

 

Challenge

  • Lack of recent conversation with stakeholders and users about content needed and not needed within the site 

  • Lack of guidelines for adding pages/content to site, resulting in unnecessary/redundant content and less intuitive site navigation Outdated website copy

 

Role

  • Project Management
  • Visual Design
  • Content Strategy
  • Navigation
  • User Research
  • Stakeholder Interviews

 

Deliverables

  • Synthesized research results from surveys, interviews, studies (personas below) 
  • Site map based upon comparative analysis of other school sites/interviews with stakeholders, and feedback from users
  • User Flow
  • Wireframes and High-fidelity page mock ups Link to prototype

 

Intro

I was asked to lead the redesign of the network-wide website for the organization. The project lasted from April 2017 until September 2017. I was in charge of managing the project, completing all research, leading stakeholder meetings, designing an updated site map, wireframes and delivering high-fidelity mock ups. I then handed the mock ups to an outside contractor to build the site in WordPress. This project involved late nights and many weekends, but was a truly worthwhile endeavor.

 

comparative analysis

Z

surveys

w

interviews

Research

I started by talking to leaders at the organization to get a better idea of what our most important goals were for the site. It would be crucial to meet organization goals, offer the content our users were seeking, and develop a strong brand to strongly position the school system alongside multiple competitors.

I sent surveys to target users, including teachers, parents, and current staff. I learned about what teachers decided what school they wanted to work at. I also read about how parents chose where they wanted to send their children. I asked:

  • Who are our target users?
  • How can we meet their needs?
  • How can we meet organizational goals?

 

Synthesis

Persona & User Flow

The personas represent the target users of the site. They are based on survey answers, conversations with key leaders and research. The most important site users are the teacher job seeker and parent school seeker. The teacher job seeker is important because every year there is a need to fill multiple teacher vacancies. The parent school seeker is important because every year, we work to increase student enrollment across our schools.

These personas were used to inform the design and content of the most important pages on the website.

 

Ideation

Site Map
Wireframes

 

New Page: School Directory

Before this new page was designed, parents had to click around to multiple pages to find what they were looking for. There was a “map” page with links to each campus. On another page, there was general information about charter schools with links to the campuses on the right. And lastly, there was a very long dropdown menu for parents to navigate. None of these pages offered information about what grade levels were offered at each school.

New Page
Old Pages

Updated Page: Teach at Friendship

Previously, there was no consistent visual design for the “Teach at Friendship” page. Also, there were not clear CTAs for this important page. I created a new page aligned with the new design system and prominent CTAs to “apply now.” The new “Why You’ll love Friendship” section features information gleamed from surveys.

New Page
Old Page

Style Guide