The Greatest Threat to Our Planet is The Belief That Someone Else Will Save it.
I worked in as the solo UI designer to rebrand and re-skin an existing environmental law charity website, elaw.org
My Role: Researcher, UI Designer
Duration: 1 week
Completed: September 2020
Tools: Sketch
Problem
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Improving the UI of charity website, ELAW, to make it more approachable and trustworthy for users.
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Challenge
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Re-skin and rebrand two pages from the ELAW website, creating a responsive website on mobile, tablet and desktop.
Deliverables
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Competitor Analysis
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Persona
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Brand Values
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Brand Personality
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Brand Affinities
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Word Association
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Mood Boards
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Style Guide
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Low-Fidelity Wireframes
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High-Fidelity Wireframes Across 3 Devices
Outcomes
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Project completed on time​
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Responsive website design for 2 pages completed across 3 devices in the space of 4 days.
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Positive feedback - "your screens really nailed your values and keywords and your mobile screens are really considered and well laid out."
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Overview
The Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW), is an environmental charity website. They help communities speak out for clean air, clean water and a healthy planet.
I was the sole UI designer for this project. Competitive analysis helped me understand similar responsive website layouts, cultivating brand values helped to create mood boards and, ultimately, high-fidelity wireframes.
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How do I find out more? You may ask...just keep scrolling.
Discover & Define
Competitive analysis on similar websites, such as Greenpeace, Grist and the WWF gave an idea for layouts and responsive design for similar charitable websites. Choosing 5 brand values helped build ELAW's personality, associating with companies with similar goals. An interesting spin, I decided that Marvel would be a great brand affinity with similar, shared values - passionate about saving the world, determined to complete their end goal and really making a difference to people's lives.
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Using this research, several mood boards were created to help inspire ideas for colour palettes, typography and imagery.
Develop & Deliver
One huge challenge for this project was time management. I was expected to produce several screens on small, medium and large screen sizes in just 4 days. I used my organisational skills, gained from previous careers, to help plan and keep to a strict schedule for getting work done in a timely manner.
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First, some very basic, sketched wireframes were produced. These were great for very quickly mapping out the layout for the website across the three devices. Time was running out so, after some brief testing with users and gaining insights, I jumped into the high-fidelity wireframes.
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Using Sketch, I recreated the main Home Page and the "about us" page, across mobile, tablet and desktop.
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Along the way I added buttons, typography and colours to my style guide, helping to keep the brand identity consistent, recognisable and transferrable.
Conclusion
Overall, I was incredibly proud of my project outcome. Initially, I felt apprehensive about my UI skills. Producing a responsive website in such a short space of time, finding colours and imagery that would work across all screen sizes to provide the right message, would be a challenge. However, my efficient time management and techniques such as choosing brand values, a brand personality and mood boards helped more than I could have imagined. Once my high-fidelity wireframes were complete I was confident ELAW could now save the planet.
