The Project
Equal Education run as a social enterprise that offer a range of specialist 1:1 tutoring programmes for vulnerable and disadvantaged students. They provide targeted academic and pastoral support for Children Looked After, those who are Adopted, and those with Special Educational Needs. Equal Education has asked me to re-design their homepage for them.
The problem
The original homepage is too bland, lacking creativity, and does not attract new customers to interact with.
The goal
To re-design the homepage according to the needs of the company, making it a new homepage where new and old customers would come and be fascinated by.
Design Process
Equal Education
The research for this project started with understanding the company, and understanding what they wanted for their users and understanding their end goal. With the information gathered, I could then empathise with the company and further understand the issues they were facing.
I interviewed someone on the team of Equal Education and recorded their response.
Current website Pain Points
The main pain points picked up from the interview were that the homepage lacks important information, doesn’t come across as inviting or welcoming, and doesn’t cause the user to stay and explore.
Personas
Two personas were made to show the frustrations and goals of a users who tutor children.
Problem Statement
“Mike is a freelance tutor who needs to easily know if an organisation or institution can be trusted to accommodate disadvantaged children, because he has found that a lot of places do some children no good.”
Problem Statement
“Sharon is an English Teacher who wants to be a part of a community of tutors who care about disadvantaged children, because too many tutors are not doing their job correctly, which in turn is affecting these children.”
Empathy maps
Empathy maps were further created for both Mike and Sharon to have a deeper understanding of the user’s thoughts, actvities, and feelings.
Mind Map
To further define the issues with the original design, I identified the main features on the current homepage. This helped me to know what was missing and what could be added on the redesign.
After identifying the main features of the current homepage, I realised that there wasn’t much on there. To get to other important features and information, you would have to go through a different link or tab, making navigating less easy for the user.
Mind Mapping
To begin ideating, I created a mind map of all the additional features that could be added to the homepage and how the original features could be improved.
Low-Fidelity wireframes
Before jumping straight into designing, I sketched some low-fidelity wireframes with the ideas from my mind map.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
To start my design stage, I developed my paper sketches into digital wireframes on Figma.
I took the best designs from each sketch and combined them into one to make the desired homepage for Equal Education.
High-Fidelity Wireframes
After creating my mid-fidelity wireframes, I put it up with user testing and made some iterations. I then started building high-fidelity prototypes. I considered a colour scheme based on the original homepage and kept this in mind.
Here is my final design:
Prototype
To test my final design, I created a working prototype to show how the end user would work their way through the Equal Education Homepage, from the top to bottom.
It worked.
I showed my high-fidelity wireframes to the team of Equal Education, and I received nothing but good feedback. They loved the designs, the colour schemes, and how each section was presented. They had also realised once they saw my design that their homepage was missing a lot of vital information.