About 26Health
26Health is an all-inclusive health clinic that provides comprehensive physical and mental health services, regardless of ability to pay, to the LGBTQ+ community and allies. They already had an online presence but were looking to redesign the website to better suit their brand and needs.
My Role & Key Contributions
I led the research and design, while collaborating with two developers to create the custom components needed for the design. After building out the prototypes, I built all of the pages in WordPress leveraging the Gutenberg editor, using custom blocks created by the developers, and applying custom styles. I also served as the product owner and project manager.
Roles
UI/UX Designer, Project Manager, WordPress Publisher
Skills
Wireframes, mockups, user flows, data analysis, persona hypothesis, Wordpress, Tailwind CSS
the challenge
How might 26Health’s digital presence engage and invite (not overwhelm and detract)?
Part of 26Health’s mission for healthcare is not only to be an encompassing provider, but to also provide people with information and resources to better educate themselves. The primary key pain point was that their current website was unable to handle the information in a way that was accessible and easy for people to use.
Additional pain points included utilization of the brand’s color palette and some images, there was an overwhelming concern of being able to reinforce the “care for every letter” tagline throughout the design.
Our Main Goals
Create a new design that feels cohesive with 26Health’s strong branding and showcases more diversity and inclusion.
Organize the website in a way that would present a large amount of information in a more digestible and approachable way.
Increase user engagement on the site overall with a special focus on directing inquiries to their respective departments.
Kickoff
Although the client did know that they wanted to enhance the look and feel of the website, they weren’t entirely sure of what their specific pain points were.
In order to identify these, we conducted a series of qualitative interviews (12 total) with various employees in different departments. From these interviews, I then analyzed the notes to compile a comprehensive list of some key points:
🗓 Difficulties when making appointments – there is a need for more inclusive questions and more details depending on the department an individual is booking with. Also the online booking process does not work well and is very limited.
🤯 Incoming requests are not easily filtered to the corresponding departments – everything goes to a generic “info@” email, which made it more difficult to delegate.
Users
Given that 26Health’s focus is to be inclusive, it comes as no surprise that their user base is pretty broad. However, thanks to the insight of the qualitative interviews as well as some analytics data, I was able to pinpoint a few specific ones to create personas that would encompass some of the main points we wanted to address.
User Data
- Primary ages: young adult to middle age
- Languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Creole, and Vietnamese
- Areas of interest: medical health, mental health, medispa, and adoptions
- Income levels: low to high, with lower focused on needs from the facilities and higher being supporters and donors to the community
THE SOLUTION
A Restructured Layout & Brand New Design
With all the data and research in place, I started rebuilding the website from the ground up beginning with a restructured sitemap with a new mega menu design.
In order to handle the large amount of information, I proposed we use a mega menu structure for the navigation menu in order to add additional levels and sections to break down the pages into bite-size areas.
Increased Use of Imagery Throughout the Website
In order to fully embrace the inclusive aspect, I felt it was important to include as many different images of people of various races, genders, sexualities, and ages. The idea was anyone could visit the website and see themselves.
A Custom Designed Theme & More Robust Pages
We also worked alongside a content strategy firm that was revamping the content for every single page on the website. They increased the word count of each page to the minimum requirement for SEO optimization and keyword captures. With this new content in hand, it was then my job to lay it out in an interesting and dynamic way.
To give the pages a cohesive look, I felt it was important to give them a strong design that would encompass many of the brand’s main elements. As such, the header would become the centerpiece of each page and the main focal point to bring all of these new aspects together.
Create Organic Paths to Other Parts of the Website
In order to increase user engagement and interest throughout the website, I designed specific areas that would tie in related content to a page. This way, if a user was interested in learning more about a specific topic or service they were already on, the suggestions would be right at their fingertips.
THE RESULT
A More Inclusive Website & Stronger Engagement
The redesign of the website had a resounding positive response from the client as well as their users. We had many responses within the first few weeks of launch with positive feedback and relief from addressing certain pain points. Analytics also showed an increase in website traffic and longer engagement.
Reflections
I found this project to be very fulfilling and challenging in ways that I had not experienced in any previous work. Although I am familiar with keeping in mind general accessibility, this project’s client base made me push the boundaries of that quite a bit further, which pushed my problem solving skills as well.
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