Blue Future: User Research and Design Recommendations for Online Outreach 

Student Team Project: Create a simple, instinctive, and action oriented online experience to engage and equip young people with tools to volunteer, organize, and run for office to create a progressive future for America.

Timeline: Two weeks

UX Practices: Competitive Analysis, SWOT Analysis, User Research, Personas, Storyboard, Information Architecture, Style Guide, Wireframes, User Flows, Usability Test, Visual Design and UI.

Skills & Tools: Hand sketching, Photoshop, Sketch, Principle.

Project Team and Responsibilities:

Case Study: The Future of Blue

Project Overview: Assist Blue Future delineate a clear path to improve their website design, define an overall branding, and offer recommendations for future enhancements. By applying UX Design principles, create a compelling website and social media content, and an overall brand that speaks to the values of the Millennial Generation and Generation Z.

About Blue Future: Blue Future is a youth-led civic engagement startup focused on organizing young people around progressive electoral campaigns. As a relatively new organization, Blue Future wants to effectively expand their outreach through improved online platform

Competitive Analysis: Some selected competitor sites were analyzed to primarily compare their voice and tone, and layout designs. These comparisons helped us to assess their effectiveness and identify key elements that enhance user experience.

Generational Trends - Millennials vs Gen Z: Crucial to Blue Future’s mission, is understanding how to reach out to young Americans; and making the task a little more complex is the fact that the young generation is distinctly divided into two groups — the Millennials and Generation Z. Our research indicates that the approach to engaging these two groups must be designed to align with the different trends these two generations display. However, despite many differences, a key trait both groups share is the desire for authenticity.

User Research & Personas: To get better insights into the young generation’s participation in civic activities and understand some specific behavior patterns of Blue Future’s user base, a short survey was sent to 13 users. We received 5 responses within the time limit allotted for this activity. Based on the responses some key user ideas were noted. As the primary Blue Future base, each target generation was represented by a persona — one who is familiar with Blue Future’s mission, and the other who might need additional motivation to get involved. Meet Sienna and Greg.

Design Process: The design process is a journey from exploration to iteration, but never linear, creating a complex, seemingly chaotic track that is anything but random. Our journey began with creating a storyboard.

The next step was to develop a structure for the website to help users find information and complete tasks. Information Architecture plays a very important role in the entire design process by informing a number of processes, such as content strategy, user interface design, interaction design, and in developing wireframes and prototypes.

Usability Testing: A usability test script was developed as a guide for conducting the tests, and some users were requested to participate. User insights and feedback from these tests were used to further refine the concepts before the final prototype was developed.

Final Presentation: A colorful, bold and attractive website with engaging content and easy to navigate user flows was presented to the client.