Illinois Union of the Homeless

THE CHALLENGE

In my Community Tech Projects class, the class was tasked with developing a website for a Chicago community partner using WordPress. My team was matched with Illinois Union of the Homeless. My partner and I worked on creating a site that included our clients’ wants and needs while designing something functional and beautiful.

We aimed to meet these three goals during the duration of our project:

Include client(s) wants and needs for the website
Make a website easy to maintain after development is over
Include features geared towards intended audience

IDENTIFYING THE AUDIENCE

U S E R P E R S O N A S

Once we were able to identify our client's intended audience, my partner and I created 3 user personas. This aided in discovering their needs and possible pain points to include and watch out for in the website.

Here are the three groups we identified:

DONORS

W E B S I T E R E Q U I R E M E N T S

H I G H - F I D E L I T Y M O C K U P

HOMEPAGE

Click here to visit the full website!

VOLUNTEERS

HOMELESS INDIVIDUALS

PLANNING OUT THE DESIGN

Utilizing both the requests from our client and information from our user personas, my partner and I were able to come up with some website requirements that should be integrated into the site by the end of this 10 week period:

Monetary Donations

Meet with an Organizer
Volunteer Form
Blog/Newsletters
Mailing Subscription

With the requirements established, my partner designed wireframes, and I created the mockup once she completed them. These were based off of the WordPress theme they chose called “Montagna” restraining some designs that we could or could not do. Creating these allowed for the client to give us their opinion on the design + layout before doing any web design within WordPress.

GET HELP PAGE

VOLUNTEER PAGE

BLOG PAGE

THE FINALIZED SITE

W E B S I T E W A L K T H R O U G H

REFLECTION

Communication is KEY.

Working on a project/deliverable for a client is different than creating something for yourself. I learned that it is crucial to maintain excellent communication between both the client as well as with my partner. Keeping organized, clarifying client + designer expectations of each other, and setting deadlines for when content and components should be implemented helped to streamline website production.

Not everything will happen as you expect it to.

At the start of the project, our expectations for what the final website looked like deviated as design process went on. Some things, like receiving monetary donations from donors, could not be implemented during the 10 week time span. However, compromises and alterations to make up for things that have gone unfinished helped to make the website feel more complete. It’s best not to panic when things don’t go as planned, instead you should find a way to maneuver gracefully around these obstacles.