A Blade of Grass
Introducing human-centered design at an art and social impact organization
ROLES
Design & Experience Manager (Dec. ‘18-Oct. ‘20)
Design & Communications Manager (Oct. ‘17-Dec. ‘18)
Including: UX/UI Design and UX Research, Visual Design, Project Management
TEAM
Executive Director
Director of Programs
Director of Field Research
Head of Communications
Communications and Editorial Manager
Programs Manager
Overview
A Blade of Grass is a NY-based organization that partners with socially engaged artists to support and amplify their work through a fellowship program and, previously, through public events, short documentary films, and a range of online content.
I led design within our cross-functional team where I:
Introduced human-centered UX design and research processes
Established in-house design infrastructure as the organizations first designer
Led all design projects across digital, print, social, and events
Project Spotlight —
Redesigning our website homepage and architecture for a more user-friendly experience and to increase engagement with our content
Problem
Clearly communicating A Blade of Grass’s work relies on explaining the complex and lesser-known field of socially engaged art. This, along with other obstacles, made it difficult to achieve our organization’s goal of expanding our audience and growing support for our partnering artists.
An earlier round of content strategy research revealed users were confused about what we did, resulting in low engagement with our content and obstacles to growing our audience. Beyond the limits of content strategy, we needed to take a critical look at our website which was a key point of access to our work.
Solution
A redesigned homepage and overall site architecture to:
Clearly communicate our organization’s work
Better facilitate engagement with our flagship content
Provide easily accessible information on our renowned fellowship program
Make navigation and exploration easier and more accessible through simplified taxonomy and overall architecture
Process Overview
Research & Collaborative Iteration
Having just completed a round of content strategy work with a third-party design agency, we turned to the website with new insights and goals in mind.
I took the team through a series of design meetings and workshops to:
analyze our current website
review recent content strategy research findings to identify any data that translated to design revisions
review a competitive analysis
brainstorm and review mockups of new ideas
Internal brainstorming sessions gave the team dedicated time to collaboratively review our existing homepage and identify questions and possible revisions.
Keeping costs down from the get-go
A very limited budget meant implementation costs would need to be kept at a minimum.
I explored the inner workings of our site more deeply to see what tactical changes I could make in-house with minimal third-party developers.
Redesigning our website architecture and global navigation
The recent content strategy work had yieled recommendations for simplifying our naming strategy and site architecture.
I used these findings and a revised taxonomy to design a more clear site menu that now included a CTA to subscribe to our newsletter, and worked with a developer to implement the changes.
Menu: Before
Menu: After
Iterations to the homepage went hand-in-hand with the creation of new content strategy practices
I drafted a series of possible redesigns for the homepage and worked with my team to gather and implement feedback. This was done in line with a new content strategy idea to organize our content by theme, using the idea of a playlist.
Our revision, which would need to be tested, implemented a new “playlist” approach to organizing and presenting our content. This process was interwoven with changes to our language, specifically our guidelines for titling articles, films, and events.
Making the case for user research and more iteration
Introducing user research processes
Proposing, explaining, and planning a round of user research not only addressed our present work, but also established an understanding of the value and need for user research more generally.
Moderated usability tests put our new revisions and strategies to the test
A key assumption to test on our new homepage:
“If we lead with our content, people will know we make content (and they’ll interact with it)”
Our latest revision relied on including a tagline about who we were in the header and the common art-institution approach of showing the work you exhibit and support.
Would this work, even though we’re not a typical art institution?
Format:
In-person, Moderated
30-45min
Key Testing Insights
Users still found it hard to understand what we do and what role we play — Are we the artists? The funders? Something else?
Users are overwhelmed by the homepage and, as a result, don’t engage with our content
The organization seems friendly and thoughtful, but so much blue in the branding feels corporate and cold
Working with what we’ve got
Further iterations based on priority issue areas, constraints of our current website, and balancing in-house and developer costs
In collaboration with my team, we identified what issues to prioritize.
In collaboration with our contracting developers, I worked to understand cost implications of changes we were considering.
I drafted another round of revisions to be reviewed with the team. Feedback was incorporated before leading us to our final iteration in this round of changes.
The End Result
Implementation & Next Steps
Implementation & Upkeep
I worked closely with our developer to understand what worked best for them in terms of format for hand-off materials. I created high-fidelity annotated mockups and worked with them to implement our revisions, reviewing for quality and accuracy.
Along the way, I learned how new changes were being made on the backend in order to address bugs and make minor changes myself in the future.
Planning for the future and improving our processes
For reasons of budget and competing priorities in other projects, additional edits were flagged for future work. The impact of the current revisions would be analyzed from web analytics and further research.
In terms of process, I identified different ways to improve our research and design process and sought out resources to keep learning myself.
Reflection
The new integration of UX research into our greater work flow and a shared understanding of its value proved as important as the redesign itself
Now, years later with much more experience in UX research and design processes, there’s a lot I would have done differently in this project, but I value it for the lessons and growing pains that came with it.
We introduced an important new set of in-house processes and a better understanding of the type of design work we needed to prioritize.
As someone who loves bringing non-designers into the design process and showing the value of human-centered design, the opportunity to work closely with my team on this was very fulfilling.