Project Aware UX research & design.
Project AWARE was a long-term client; so long term that Echo & Co. had done their previous website in 2008. By the time I came along, they needed a technology overhaul (RIP Drupal 6) and an entirely new experience to match their complex system of dive surveys, user-generated content, and advocacy campaigns.
The Project.
Project AWARE is a unique blend of action-oriented community and conservation policy non-profit. Thousands of scuba divers participate in Project AWARE activities, collecting debris and helping clean up the world’s oceans one piece of garbage at a time. Their platform not only contained a robust, highly customized survey submission component, but also had content translated into several different languages.
The technology challenge on this project was significant. While Drupal 8 was a shiny new tool that, we hoped, would give the new site a longer shelf-life, there were real concerns about whether it could support the functionality required to have feature parity with the old site. We also wanted to push the limits of the content authoring experience to give the team the ability to tell stories in a flexible, visual way.
Research.
To start, we evaluated the existing site, both from an internal perspective with stakeholder surveys, and a usability perspective with site surveys and heuristic evaluations. Stakeholders shared their biggest headaches, including not being able to highlight issue areas, struggling with the backend, and wishing for more powerful visuals and storytelling.
The usability testing, conducted via task-oriented surveys targeted at people familiar with scuba diving and ocean conservation, revealed similar problems; using the website was challenging and it was hard to understand what Project AWARE even did.
IA & UX.
After inventorying and categorizing the content, we developed a new site architecture that was more in line with modern user experience, focused on simplifying the navigation and driving toward action. Moving from a menu system that focused on the organization to one that gave users something to do encouraged the repeat participation that is central to their organization.
The new user experience, featuring 16 different page templates, allowed for more streamlined, easier-to-use features that delivered the same functionality as the old site, but was significantly less fragile and encouraged going deeper into the site.
New Website
Finally, updated content components and visuals highlighted the vast reach and impact of the organization (with updatable numbers showing how much debris had been collected and how many divers had participated), gave users several ways of taking action alongside the organization, and highlighted the incredible images and stories that the organization and community had collected through the years. The balance of user stories and organization stories is balanced harmoniously and accessible, even to those of us who don’t dive.