Sustainable Tracker

Project Background

Taking over the design from a previous team, my role as the point of contact with the founder involved a meticulous exploration of the project's requirements, ensuring a seamless transition and understanding the founder's vision for a cohesive design that embodies each of the 17 SDGs. Through collaborative efforts, we successfully transformed the Sustainable Tracker website by implementing stories, tracking SDG metrics, and ways to get involved in local sustainability efforts.

1. Outdated design

2. Inconstant Format

3. Warped images

4. Lack of Information

5. Indecision over the sites main goal

Pain Points

The design we inherited

The Goal

Create a design that offers a dynamic platform to promote sustainability but is also easy for one person to manage on their own while it is getting off the ground.

• Sustainable Development Goal Metrics

• Story Filters

• Involvement Opportunities

Features

First Steps

The first priority was figuring out exactly what the founder wanted the site to be. We went through many different websites and took notes on the things that she liked and disliked as well as conducting a competitor analysis. The team conducted user research to narrow down the user demographic and then moved onto working through the information architecture.

Competitor Analysis

During competitor analysis I found that there were many sites that focused on news, stories, and metrics but did not emphasize local opportunities for involvement and most competitors had a light, airy, natural design.

Changes

The client asked for a dark theme for the site, wanting a design that felt more ‘serious’. We created a rotating loading screen to provide active and eye catching feedback to the user.

Loading screen

BEFORE

AFTER

I removed the drop shadow but changed the nav bar to all caps in order to maintain legibility. I also changed what was actually on the nav bar, adding ‘partners’, ‘get involved’, ‘home’, and ‘metrics’. Changing Tracker to metrics was because it is a more accurate representation of what is on the page. We no longer needed the about because that message is portrayed with statements on the tracker and products pages.

The menu bar is where the users that are adding can log in to join the conversation and see their settings. I didn’t put it on the nav bar due to lack of real estate as well as the client not wanting to prioritize people making accounts but to focus on the sites information. The new logo will still bring you to the home page but during user testing we found that the logo to home page is not a universal website quality, specifically in eastern design. Due to the sustainable tracker having a global focus I wanted to make the site as accessible to as many people as possible.

What I learned

Clear communication and plans between the design team and the client are vital to the effectiveness of the project as a whole. One of the main problems we ran into was lack of direction for the website. This made figuring out the information hierarchy and creating a solid branding throughout much more difficult. There were some things that we were told needed to be in the design like ‘log in’ being in the menu bar rather than the nav bar information being in the hamburger menu. Overall this project really taught me about how to communicate effectively and learn to problem solve by adapting to the situation and design requirements.