Helping more animals find their forever homes with a new responsive website design
CENLA Alliance for Animals Case
Lead UX/UI Designer
Figma | InVision | Visio | Design Systems | Adobe Creative Suites | Photoshop
Cenla Alliance For Animals (CENLA) is a nonprofit organization committed to the rescue, transport, and adoption of homeless animals in Louisiana. In a state where animal homelessness is prevalent, CENLA works tirelessly to make a positive impact.
Cenla Alliance For Animals has an outdated website that frustrates adopters, who find it difficult to use. As a result, many users turn to other shelter websites where they can easily browse available animals, schedule meet-and-greets, and complete applications. Additionally, the organization has received feedback about their logo being unmemorable and is seeking to make it more impactful.
Drawing inspiration from similar organizations can guide the design process to better meet CENLA's needs. I analyzed three comparable companies to identify effective elements and areas for improvement.
Petfinder's user-friendly design features simple navigation, engaging icons, tailored filters, and immediate animal showcases.
CENLA’s current website showcases animals immediately but lacks a filter for users to specify their preferences. Adding this feature will enhance the experience for future adopters.
The Louisiana SPCA offers a fun and welcoming UI for adopters, featuring complementary colors, clear imagery, and easy-to-read typography.
On CENLA's website, vibrant colors may challenge users with color blindness. Enhancing contrast will improve readability. Also, clearer image resolutions will enhance visibility of animal pictures and videos.
The logo clearly communicates the business's animal focus with a shadowed dog and cat cleverly integrated into the letters "R" and "N," conveying their mission at a glance.
On CENLA's website, the animal-themed icons on the "CAFA" appear randomly placed. To enhance logo memorability, I'll integrate the animal icons more meaningfully.
Conducting 1:1 interviews provides valuable insights that help me understand CENLA's challenges from a new perspective. Adopters were frustrated with the website's complexity in filling out applications, scheduling appointments, and finding suitable animals, often leading them to other shelters. To address this, creating a user-friendly interface that simplifies these tasks is crucial. I conducted interviews where participants reviewed competitor and CENLA websites to identify strengths and weaknesses. Key takeaways included keeping the application concise, implementing a filter for specific needs, and focusing the website content on animals rather than the shelter. These interviews were instrumental in gathering actionable feedback for improving the website.
Creating user personas enables me to gain a deep understanding of users' needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals, which is crucial for addressing CENLA's challenges. Animal lovers exhibit diverse lifestyles, needs, and preferences when choosing a lifelong companion. To capture this diversity, I developed three user personas based on interviews with individuals who are potential adopters of shelter animals.
After conducting thorough user research, competitive analysis, and developing user personas, I crafted a robust design strategy. CENLA's current website presents challenges: it lacks user-friendliness, suffers from unappealing color schemes and blurry imagery, features a lengthy adoption application process, and requires phone calls to schedule meet and greets. Drawing from this research, I now have a clear vision for enhancing CENLA's website to drive improved traffic and usability.
The site map I structured reflects prioritized, labeled, and linked pages based on extensive user research. Currently, CENLA's homepage displays animals in a simple "card" format, but redesigning it for greater visual appeal aims to attract more prospective adopters. Additionally, integrating an online "meet and greet" scheduling feature, which is currently lacking, into the new website design is crucial. This foundational approach ensures a comprehensive solution aligned with user needs and organizational goals.
When creating the task flow diagram, I prioritized addressing the pain points identified during my user research. On the current CENLA website, navigating from discovering an animal to completing the adoption application proved cumbersome and lengthy for many users seeking their forever companion. Streamlining this process was essential to ensure a seamless and enjoyable experience, keeping potential adopters engaged on the website and facilitating their search for the perfect animal companion.
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Based on the insights from user research, I visualized a streamlined user journey for the website. The redesigned site now empowers users to customize their search with tailored filters, complete a simplified application process, independently schedule meet and greet sessions, and importantly, discover their ideal "purrfect match" through an interactive quiz.
CENLA chose to retain the orange and blue colors, symbolizing optimism and loyalty respectively. I crafted a logo that distinctly communicates their animal-centric mission, which they found more memorable than their previous design. Opting for the sans serif typeface Montserrat, I ensured it aligned well with modern web aesthetics. The buttons were redesigned for a sleek and contemporary look, moving away from the clunkiness of their previous design.
With developed user stories and a deeper framework understanding, I designed a product to embody user experiences and feedback constructively. Given CENLA's outdated website lacking a robust landing page, I focused on creating wireframes that enhance visual appeal and user enjoyment. Post user research, priorities included ensuring easy navigation, streamlining the application process, improving appointment scheduling, and enhancing the adoptable pet display with a user-friendly filter option.
Before finalizing color, typography, and images, I conducted a usability test to evaluate the initial flow of the low-fidelity CENLA website. This allowed me to ensure that the product's features, functions, and overall purpose aligned with real-life user expectations. Participants provided valuable feedback, highlighting areas for improvement. They suggested modernizing the landing page design, enhancing icons for a more whimsical touch, and organizing the filter options on the left side of the category page for better usability. For the personal page, they recommended clearer information layout with fewer clicks. Users found the application process lengthy and suggested condensing it into a single-page format with a persistent progress tracker for a friendlier experience. Enhancing the scheduling of meet & greets by implementing a calendar view for availability was also advised. While the "Purrfect Fit Quiz" concept was appreciated, participants felt it could be more creatively engaging to prevent user boredom and potential site abandonment.
Now that I've completed the usability test and have finalized solid wireframes for the product, I'm prepared to integrate the UI Kit I developed into my designs. Throughout this process, I've applied lessons learned about creating standout and successful products.
Cenla Alliance For Animals has a longstanding commitment to rescuing, transporting, and fostering animals. Their passion drives them to match pets with loving homes where they can thrive. Prior to engaging a UX/UI Designer, their outdated website and logo had garnered complaints about usability, causing potential adopters to seek other rescues. With the expertise of a UX/UI Designer, they aimed to address these issues and facilitate meaningful connections between pets and adopters.
Through comprehensive user research, I gained insights into the needs of their audience and the adoption process. This research enabled me to gather reliable data and formulate an effective online responsive design.
The process involved testing, sketching, and prototyping to identify pain points and successful features desired in an adoption website. This informed the design direction I pursued for the company, ensuring it meets both user expectations and business goals.
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