A revamped, dynamic website that provides early childhood resources, resulting in a 93% satisfaction rate.
UX Design Consultant, team of 3
Staff portal
🚀 Launched
Kai Ming Head Start, our client, offers free preschool services to children aged 6 months to 5 years old from eligible families in San Francisco. They sought to develop a more user-friendly website where parents can easily find enrollment and program information. In addition, their staff desired a portal that consolidates internal resources.
The previous website faced challenges related to usability, visual design, and content design. As a result, the primary goals of this project were modernizing the website interface and enhancing overall functionality to attract more applicants and streamline the staff’s workflow.
The new design has been implemented, addressing the usability issues by simplifying the enrollment process and centralizing staff resources. Besides, we improved user engagement through a fresh visual style and easy-to-understand content. Therefore, the website now ranks at the top of search results, making it easier for applicants to find the program.
We initially sent a survey to parents and staff members to gather insights into their experience with the Kai Ming website. Analyzing the feedback from over 170 parents and 30 staff members, we identified the following key features that users prioritize the most.
The previous website lacked a dedicated section that provided comprehensive information about the classes, including the school calendar, curriculum, and announcements.
Navigating between different centers to compare their facilities was difficult.
We proposed a restructuring of the website to address these concerns. We also incorporated a new section with useful resources for parents seeking additional educational materials.
We created wireframes with the new sitemap. Based on the stakeholder feedback, I iterated the design elements and patterns in the staff portal . For example, I simplified the staff login option and adjusted the card size to ensure consistency.
To see if the design was effective, we tested it with 4 parents and 5 staff members. We defined data logging codes for the task completion status and asked follow-up questions.
The feedback indicates that the new website is easy to use, and the staff portal is convenient.
The tab links should be reorganized to better align with user needs. The content hierarchy within the staff portal should be adjusted to prevent user confusion.
Our team established a style guide and worked with engineers to build the new website, incorporating features incrementally. Kai Ming was rebranding their illustrations at the same time, so we consulted a visual designer at Kai Ming and integrated her ideas into the style guide.
To prioritize the development phases, we considered the frequency and complexity of content updates. I learned how to balance design and engineering efforts by utilizing existing resources like Google Calendar, Maps, and Drive APIs. With these resources, we accomplished the redesign goals while minimizing maintenance costs for the client.