challenge

How can we reinvigorate the local therapy animal volunteer community with existing touchpoints?

Therapy Pets of Northern Arizona (TPNAZ) is a nonprofit dedicated to promoting therapy dog work and training throughout the community.

This case study explores the journey of TPNAZ’s efforts to rejuvenate its vision with a primary focus on a website redesign.

research insights

Inactive. Confusing. Disconnected.

Through moderated interviews of volunteers and local community members, three main themes appeared.

Inactive

There's no updated information for active or potential volunteers

Confusing

Hard to find clear information and opens many different tabs

Disconnected

Each volunteer team feels independent of the organization

persona

Devoted participant(s)

Based on the research, we identified three different use cases that could be represented by one persona across their involvement with the organization.

Someone new who wants to train and register as a therapy team
Registered volunteer who relocated and wants to connect with local volunteer sites
Someone who requests therapy teams for a local event or recurring program

website update details

Balance audience and stakeholder goals

Based on the persona and the stakeholder goals, the additional prioritized pages included the following:

Training and volunteer pages

Linked to the new CTA and non profit goal of increasing the active volunteer pool. Most notably, the information is housed in drop downs and scrollable instead of each hyperlink opening to a new page.

Contact forms

Specified the required fields and added a couple common questions that could potentially reduce additional communication with the non-profit's volunteer administration.

style tile

Open source and asset organization

This project was a user interface redesign and alignment. Since the client was a small donation based organization, I prioritized open source UI elements including typefaces, illustrations and photos.

In addition, half of our time was dedicated to helping the client sort through their design files and outdated presentation documents, a task that was crucial for ensuring progress and smooth communication.

Through this exercise, I crafter the nonprofit's first style tile for future design usage, whether taken on by me or another designer.

asynchrounous usability testing and iteration

"Easy to navigate"

With asynchronous usability testing, over 60% of participants felt that the overall site was easy to navigate but they had a hard time finding the sign-up link on the training site.

lessons learned

The real problem: Service Design

As the project unfolded, it became more evident that TPNAZ was reflecting on its role in the community as a whole.
‍
The entire project would have benefited from a full review of all the interactions involved, front and back stage. Upholding consistent quality training for dogs and handlers, maintaining a seasonal schedule for evaluations and communicating new volunteer team contacts in a timely manner was a significant challenge in keeping the entire volunteer ecosystem afloat.
‍
While the client expressed strong interest in implementing the redesign, the longevity of TPNAZ remained in question, leading to a hold on redesign activities.

Pawsitive Transformation