DESIGN CHALLENGE
The client wanted this site to be accessible for people of all ages, specifically with older adults since their church has many older adults attending regularly. They also wanted the website to be more user friendly and aesthetically pleasing. In discussion with the client, they stated that they really wanted to modernize the current way they distributed information and use this website as a way to allow newcomers to learn more about Bramalea Fil-Can SDA church. They wanted the site to be finished and published before their anniversary date.
Lack of Hierarchy
There is not any focal point there is too much texture and there isn’t any hierarchy. Removing side images and adding more structure to the website would help.
Navigation
The menu is very small, Blog button leads to a different page. Removing the Blog section overall, Having the giving page, just be a link to the online giving page.
Lack of Identity
Everything is black and white, there isn’t any colour except for the images. Creating a brand identity and creating a style tile will help.
Content
There is not enough info about the church, there isn’t a lot of content on the pages. Adding more content and information about the church and its services will help.
Before moving into design, I spoke with their design team and project lead about the type of content that they wanted to showcase on the website. There were different ministries and bible study groups that they wanted to display, in addition they wanted to use the website to as away to promote different events that happen within the church. Together we came up with this site map which would serve as the base for the information architecture.
To better understand who I am designing for, I created this persona which would encompass the majority of users of this website. In conversations with the Bramalea SDA Design Team, I learned a majority of users would be middle-age adults. They wanted to focus on this demographic because in their church they are also a large majority of visitors and the demographic they are trying to attract.
There is an official organization that helps out with all the other Seventh-day Adventist churches, they have a brand guideline with a series of fonts and colours to choose from. After discussing with the client, we settled on this colour scheme and fonts. This was used to create the final look and feel of the website.
This homepage serves as a landing page. Upon entering this page, there are quick links to the live stream and information for any newcomers. On this page there is also information about the church and the ability to view any recent events.
Here is where users can learn about the church and their mission statement. Here you can also learn about their leadership and information about the elders.
Here the user will be able to contact the church through email and see any relevant information about the church location and hours.
Here the user can access information for each ministry inside the church. The user can learn about what they do and the focus of the ministry.
This was one of my first ever client projects. It was a great learning experience and taught me a lot about how to conduct myself. Though I’ve known the client for some time it was interesting to see how they conduct business within the church. Throughout the project there were a few issues concerning images because the church did not have a formal photographe rand lacked high resolution images.
In the future, I would like to conduct some usertesting and see how the user experience is. I would also like to push for morecopywriting and an internal team that would manage the website, as there isstill a lot of filler text that I am waiting for content on. Currently, I stillam managing the website and the events.
