Empowering indigenous youth through education, culture and community

The website had recently undergone a redesign process and NASCA were not happy with the outcome in meeting the needs of communicating and supporting the three pillars of Culture, Education, and Community. Content was not easily discovered, functions provided poor user experience, key call-to-actions were not clear and design assets were not consistent. 

Given the site had recently been developed, there was concern around how much could change and the cost to do so.

Webplace was engaged to redesign and redevelop the website to align with its brand guidelines, three pillars and content needs. 

To communicate the breadth of services and three pillars, new content types were developed to support:

• Projects and Programs
• Story telling through Case studies
• Clearer call to action page of different ways to donate (time, money or voice)
• Resources and publications to support indigenous youth community services, educational institutions and support teams 

To successfully achieve this, an iterative approach to understanding both organisational and user needs to design and build something great in partnership with NASCA.

Discovery

Working closely with NASCA, webplace facilitated an interaction design workshop to review wireframes and interaction design produced by webplace and any other artefacts provided. Through a series of iterations, a final set of well-informed wireframes were developed to address key priorities for contextual display of content and priority call-to-actions. The final interaction design then informed the design and build of the website.

Technical

Through a number of technical workshops and iterations, a detailed solution design was prepared to outline all functional requirements and technical specifications, which was informed by the discovery phase. This is an important step in identifying the functions to be considered and how those functions would technically be met. Having a clear understanding on paper, allows the project to move to the build phase.

Design

The interface design needed to be considerate of indigenous cultural beliefs and connections to land. Using the brand guidelines provided, a digital palette was developed to ensure the colours used were not only culturally considerate, but also functionally designed – ie: specific colours were reserved for key call-to-actions and content. Imagery also had to be carefully considered and only real photography provided by NASCA was used to represent the youth that NASCA supports. This ensured the design resonated with the intended audience.

Build

The website was built using WordPress and blocks to allow NASCA to easily manage content blocks within any content type. Using WYSIWYG editors for content where necessary and drag and drop functionality, ensured that NASCA would easily be able to take over in the management of content, post-go live.

The website was built to be responsive across desktop, tablet and mobile and to comply to WCAG AA 2.1 accessibility guidelines.